


The Human Epoch Of Bill Cipher's Eternal Life

by VegetarianVulture



Series: Beautiful things Can Arise From The Ashes [1]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Blood and Gore, Death, Depression, Do you want to see more of all of the characters? Well here is the fic for you, Drama, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Human Bill Cipher, It's an emotional rollercoaster so strap in, M/M, Older Dipper Pines, Sexual Content, Slow Burn, Smut, THIS FIC IS NEVER UNDERAGE, Warnings were not used to prevent spoilers, plot heavy, sort of dubcon, this picks up at the end of weirdmaggedon part 1
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-05
Updated: 2016-05-16
Packaged: 2018-04-30 04:04:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 30,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5149610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VegetarianVulture/pseuds/VegetarianVulture
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The chaotic, evil dream demon that goes by the name of Bill Cipher has finally achieved his goal: to rip open a rift in time and space to enter his desired universe. Unfortunately for the Pines family, his desired universe happens to be theirs. With the apocalypse in full force, the Pines have to find a way to survive. If they can accomplish that, they have to try to stop their universe from being torn to shreds. No big deal, right? </p><p>Nothing turns out as planned, for anyone involved. But how much can you really count on your plans when it comes to the end of the world?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Stan

A gust of strong wind tousled Stan Pines’s hair, pushing him further into a state of panic and increasing his heart rate. He vaguely wondered if his heart could be capable of beating any harder than it already was, but somehow the muscle accomplished it. Stan ducked behind the side of the building he was closest to, glancing up at the cause of the wind when he was safe out of its view.

 _One of those damned giant, winged eyeballs,_ Stan thought to himself with a grimace. Out of all of the monsters that had come from the X-shaped tear in the sky, the flying eyeballs were probably his most hated.

Well, except for one.

Once he was sure that the eye had passed by without detecting him, he continued running through the streets of the town he knew and loved. The amount of destruction and death he had seen in the last three days tore his heart to shreds. At this point, Stan was almost indifferent to the pain and suffering around him. Seeing the citizens of Gravity Falls dealing with the chaos of the tear in the sky was like a dull ache in the pit of his stomach three days into the apocalypse. _Well, except for that old run down drug store whose owner got me three days in jail for stealing some cold medicine. Fuck that guy._ Stan smirked for a second at the thought of the demolished building, before his face became stoic and focused again.  He couldn’t focus on anyone or anything else right now. He was driven through the chaos and misery by the overwhelming desire to find his family.

_Please just let them be alive. Nothing else matters._

Nearing the center of the town, Stan came upon one particular fallen building, where he saw something large and shiny buried under some rubble, as though it had been tossed aside without a second thought. His curiosity got the best of him, as he assumed the metallic shine came from some sort of valuable that someone had dropped in their panic.

Nothing could have prepared him for what he found.

Pulling the large hunk of metal out of the ruins with a grunt, he hefted the heavy statue onto a patch of grass nearby. Wiping the sweat from his forehead to keep it from running into his eyes, Stan finally got a good look at what he had pulled into view. He recoiled from the appearance of the statue with such force that he managed to trip as he stepped backwards. He fell to where he was sitting on the ground, and felt a strange, painful jolt in his chest as he looked again at the statue. Tears welled in his eyes as he realized what the metal was. _Ford._

 _Oh fucking hell. You can’t just leave me again, Stanford Pines._ Stan closed his eyes with a shudder, forcing himself to hold back his tears. Without a second thought, Stan grabbed a firm hold of the statue-Ford, and started trying to move him back to the Mystery Shack. Due to the weight of the statue, he half-dragged and half-carried his solidified brother, but the adrenaline and anger he felt gave him the strength that he needed to pull the metal along without stopping until he arrived at the Shack.

As he pulled Ford into the Shack through the gift shop, he stopped in front of the vending machine, opening the secret passageway to the underneath of the house, where he prayed Ford would have worked on something, anything that could help him fix his brother’s state. He spoke aloud, not sure if Ford could hear him, but needing to try anyway. “You really got yourself into a bad situation, huh? Arrogant bastard, I bet you tried to stand up to Cipher head on.” Stan glared down at his brother as he dragged him down the halls under the Shack. “If anything happened to those kids because of you, I will make what Cipher did to you look like a day at the beach, I can promise you that.”

For now, Stan placed his brother on the floor and began looking around, digging through piles of Ford’s research materials to try and find something that could help him. He briefly wondered to himself if he should even take the time to try and help his brother, or if he should go back and keep trying to find the twins in the ruins of Gravity Falls. Frustrated, Stan resolved to stay and work on fixing his brother for now. Ford was honestly probably his best chance at finding out what had happened to the kids, and where they may be now.

\--------

The orb shattered. It was as though it were a ball made of glass that had been thrown violently against the ground. However, the way it broke apart, the pieces of the orb flew out, as though it had exploded from the inside. The pieces shooting out away from the people huddling inside, and the shards dissipated into the air as though they were made of smoke.

The four people standing where the orb once sat were huddled together, looking shocked and unsure of their surroundings. While they were shaken up, the group seemed mostly unharmed, aside from a splatter of bruises and scrapes on each of them.

Soos and Wendy pulled apart from the group, taking in their surroundings. Wendy cheered, pumping her fist in the air. “We did it, dudes! The trap is gone. Oh man, this is amazing.” Wendy grinned at the trio standing in front of her, pleased that they had all survived and that Mabel was safely with them again.

Dipper wasn’t caught up in their small victory, however. He pulled a shaken up Mabel closer to his chest and looked at their surroundings. “The town has gotten worse since we went in there. We need to get back to the Shack.” The buildings around them were crumbling or destroyed altogether. Monstrosities still littered the streets and the sky around the town. “It’s not safe here,” he insisted, starting to pull Mabel up to her feet and along with him in the direction towards their summer home.

His group seemed to share his worry to a lesser extent, and it was Soos who spoke up first, “Don’t worry, dude. Just start walking. I’ve got Mabel.” He smiled at Mabel and scooped her up into his arms. Dipper looked unsure, but started making his way back to the Shack, directing his group and having them duck and hide behind buildings to avoid the creatures crawling around the town.

Dipper’s attention was split between focusing on getting his group back to the safety of the Shack, and his overwhelming feelings of doom and dread. He didn’t know why Bill had taken Mabel the way he did, but he did know that their freeing of her would not go unnoticed or unpunished. Dipper shuddered involuntarily. Whatever Bill was planning to do to get back at them, it wouldn’t be good.

\--------

Bill Cipher watched his rivals free Shooting Star and return through his town, without interfering. He laughed quietly and maniacally to himself as he listened in on Dipper’s thoughts. The kid was smart, he’d give him that. However, no matter how paranoid and careful the boy was, he couldn’t stop what Bill had planned. _Oh Pine Tree,_ Bill thought to himself with satisfaction, _I’m going to take you down. This town is mine, and I control everyone and everything in it. But go ahead and run, my little puppet. Go ahead and hide._

\--------

 

Stan’s heart stuck in his throat as he gazed down at the form by his knees, which was now smoking and seemed to be sizzling. Peachy tones replaced glittering gold as his brother’s form seemed to lose its stiffness. _Shit._ Stan thought to himself as his brother’s body softened entirely into flesh and bone. _This guy has made the most unbelievable mixtures. I’ve heard of turning things into gold but this?_

Stan was pulled out of his thoughts by a gasping cough. He couldn’t take his eyes off of his brother. Ford sat up on his knees and Stan lightly but firmly slapped him on his back. “You had me worried there. Good thing you’ve spent half of your life holed up in this lab, huh?”

Ford’s glare silenced him. “You? Worried? Please, I heard your threats.” Ford coughed a couple more times before trying to stand.

Stan’s relief at his brother’s safety was quickly muffled by anger. “Seriously? Second time I have saved your life and you still aren’t going to thank me?” Ford opened his mouth to speak but Stan didn’t give him the opportunity. “Nope, don’t want to hear it. Now, tell me what you know about what happened to the kids.”

Ford shut his mouth, staring angrily for a second before he responded. “Dipper was with me. Bill sent a couple of demons after him after he-,” Ford shuddered, “-froze me. But he’s a smart kid. I couldn’t see much but I’m pretty sure he got away. After that, I don’t know. I didn’t see either of them during the three days I was out there. Didn’t hear them either.”

Stan frowned. _Good to know I wasted my day trying to save this asshole._ “Alright. Well I’m going to go back out there and keep looking for them. Do you think you’ve recovered enough to go with me?”

Ford paused, his face virtually unreadable. “I would be a more efficient worker if I stayed down here and tried to find a way to stop Bill. I’m sure that I have something in here somewhere that could help us…” Ford immediately walked over to a pile of notes he had on a nearby desk and started shifting through them.

“Are… are you serious?” Stan questioned, his voice calm but his fists clenched so tightly that his knuckles were white.

“Hm? Oh. Yeah.” Ford mumbled something incoherent after that, not looking at his twin and continuing to shift through his notes.

“Those kids are out there right now, in the middle of the _fucking apocalypse_ and you would rather stay here obsessing over scraps of paper than looking for them?!” Stan could feel his face heating up with rage at his brother’s selfishness.

Finally, Ford turns around to look at his brother, half-heartedly quirking an eyebrow up at his anger. “I don’t understand why that’s such a big deal to you. I can help more here. Besides,” Ford starts, turning around again to sort through his journals, “if I can find a way to stop Bill before you can even find them, I’ll have saved them. Not you.”

That was when Stan snapped. He was seeing red, unable to fathom Ford’s words or reasoning. “ _You’re like that fucking demon!_ That’s why you got along so well when you worked with him! You’re both fucking insane, selfish, heartless monsters!” Shouting did nothing to ease off Stan’s anger, and neither did the fact that Ford turned towards him again, looking genuinely hurt by his words. “They are your _family!_ You can’t just not care about them!”

Ford sneered at his twin. “It’s not like my “ _family_ ” has done much for me, besides hold me back.”

The words were so idiotic and _wrong,_ that Stan would have laughed in his face under different circumstances. But now, he couldn’t seem to tame his anger. Without thinking about it, Stan instinctively pulled his already clenched fist up and punched his brother hard in the nose. Ford gave a shuddering gasp of pain as blood flowed past his lips and dripped off his chin. Stan hadn’t calmed down at all, the punch not easing any of his intense feelings. “Your _family_ is the only reason you’re in this _universe!_ Do you even know how many years I spent fixing that fucking portal to get you back?! Do you even care?!”

When Stan raised his fist again, Ford put his hands up in front of his face protectively and flinched. “Okay! _Okay!_ Stanley, _stop._ ” Stan felt like he could breathe again when he saw Ford shaking slightly, with pain or fear, he didn’t know. Or care. “I get it, okay? I’ll go with you. You win. I’ll… I’ll do my research after we find Mabel and Dipper.”

The kid’s names must have made something click in Stan’s head, because he lowered and relaxed his fists. He gave one last sigh before turning and walking back over to the staircase that led back up to the secret door.

Stan started up the stairs, not closing the vending machine door behind him because he heard Ford hesitantly following him. Stan felt himself completely calming as he walked through the house to the front door, wondering where all that rage had come from. _That fucking nerd has just… pressed the wrong buttons for long enough. He’s always been an ungrateful, egocentrical prick, but I don’t understand how he can be this selfish. Does he have no empathy for other people?_ Just as Stan got to the front door to open it, the door flew open, almost hitting him in the face. Good thing a life as a hardened criminal gave him quick reflexes.

The four kids were standing in the doorway, looking a little frayed and _very_ dirty, but not severely injured. Stan could practically feel a massive weight leave his shoulders. He didn’t even get a chance to speak before Mabel’s arms were around his waist. “Grunkle Stan!”

He smiled for the first time in four days, the reaction feeling weird and foreign on his face. “Ah, kid. You guys are okay. I was just heading out to keep looking for you.” He gave Mabel a little squeeze and gently got her to let go. He ushered all the kids into the Shack before closing the door behind them.

Once the twins were sitting down on the couch, blankets wrapped around their shoulders, Stan felt almost at peace for the first time since this whole ordeal started. Wendy and Soos both explained that they needed to go check on their families, and after some hesitation, Stan let them go out the front door- with weapons in hand, of course. Stan turned back to the kids, “How did y-?”

“Grunkle Ford! You’re alive! And not… metal,” Dipper interrupted the question Stan had started to ask the twins. “What happened out there? And to your nose? Are you okay?”

Ford gave Dipper a small smile. “Your uncle Stanley got something from my lab and fixed me up. I actually just got back to normal.” As if to prove his point, Ford’s bones audibly cracked as he took a step towards the twins. He ignored the other questions. “How did you two survive out there?”

Dipper shot him a huge grin. “I guess the Pines are just clever enough to outsmart the apocalypse.” Dipper nudged Mabel lightly. “Had to get this one out of a trap. It was… an experience.” He looked sympathetically at his twin, who was sitting with her knees under her chin, staring down at the floor. Dipper didn’t think much of it, assuming she was just tired and traumatized.

Stan seemed a lot more worried though, “Kid, what’s wrong? You’re safe, your brother is safe, and everything is okay. You’re home.”

As if on cue, Mabel burst into tears. “This is all my fault! Everything that was destroyed, everyone who was hurt, it’s all because of me!”

Dipper wrapped his arm around Mabel’s shoulders. “Mabel, you know this isn’t your fault. You didn’t kno-.”

“Know what?” Ford asked, his eyebrows furrowed.

Dipper glanced at Ford quizzically. Why was he upset? “She didn’t know that Blandin was possessed by Bill when she gave him the rift.”

That was when Ford snapped, and everything went to hell. “You just HANDED the rift over to Bill?! How could you possibly not know?!”

Dipper felt a flash of anger, and started to defend his twin. He didn’t even get a word out before his Grunkle Stan was pinning Ford by his collar against the wall. Ford looked terrified.

“Don’t you dare blame her for this. You’ve been tricked by that piece of shit triangle too. She’s just a kid. You’re making her feel worse about something that isn’t her fault.” Dipper could swear that the look Stan was giving his twin could turn a person to stone. Or gold. “I am sick of the way you treat this family. You act like you care about Dipper, but you’re just so caught up in your own ego about the fact that the kid admires you!” Stan shoved his brother against the wall a bit harder. “And you treat Mabel like she isn’t important.”

“Grunkle Stan…” Dipper said quietly at first, realizing why his Grunkle Ford had evaded the question about his nose. When saying his name didn’t get his grunkle to relax his grip, Dipper spoke up much more loudly. “Okay! Guys! _Relax!_ No, this isn’t Mabel’s fault but Grunkle Stan for the love of all that is good in this world, you don’t need to beat your brother up! We can figure this disaster out, but only if we do it as a family! Can you even imagine how satisfying it would be for Bill to see the Pines falling apart from the inside?!”

Stan glanced at the kid, and Dipper could see guilt and pain flash in his eyes for just a brief second before it was again replaced with anger. Stan looked back at his brother, and then dropped him. Ford lightly touched his chest where Stan had shoved him the second time. He didn’t speak.

It was only a minute that Stan and Ford stared at each other angrily before Stan spoke again, but it felt like an eternity. Mabel was still sobbing softly, more than likely blaming herself again for her grunkles fighting. “You don’t know how to care about anyone but yourself, Stanford. And that’s pathetic and I wish you luck with it. But you will not treat those kids the way you have been. You will not speak to Mabel like that. I will not let you hurt them in any way. Those two shrimps are the only people to ever treat me with love and care in this world. I will protect them with my life, if anything threatens them I will end it. That includes you.” Stan’s jaw visibly clenched as anger surged up again. “And I don’t care if this was your house originally. You will never see it or these kids again if you do anything to harm either of them again. Understand?”

A brief look of guilt and shame flashed over Ford’s face before his harsh, cold expression returned. He didn’t say anything, but he walked away. They could hear the vending machine door open and close.

Stan turned to the twins and ruffled their hair in each of his hands. “Alright you two. It’s been a long four days. Go take a shower, I’ll get us all something to eat and then we can collectively get some well-needed rest before we try to see what we can do about this little situation we’re in.”

\--------

The conversation, well… one-sided conversation, with Ford earlier replayed over and over in Stan’s mind throughout the night. After the kids were relatively in a healthy and calm state, Stan laid down in bed and did nothing but think about his brother. His twin hadn’t left the downstairs lab since he went down after their fight earlier. Stan didn’t know what he was doing down there, or if he was going to ever go to his room to go to bed, but he tried to tell himself that he didn’t really care.

The kids are fine. They’re safe in bed. His brother is downstairs doing god knows what, but also seemed to be fully recovered from his previous ailment. So why was Stan still so anxious? Why couldn’t he sleep? He shifted around under his sheets, and glared at the wall.

 _It’s me,_ Stan realized with a start, his heart picking up its pace. _I’m not doing enough to help. The apocalypse is raging on outside and I’m here in my bed, ignoring the threats right outside these old walls._ The more he thought about it, the more he realized what was really plaguing him. His words to Ford playing over and over in his head. He squeezed his eyes shut.

 _Those kids could die tomorrow, and I’m doing nothing to prevent it._ Stan’s mind wandered over any possible way he could protect them. Taking the family out of town wouldn’t help. And he knew he couldn’t just keep the twins locked inside the Mystery Shack for the rest of their lives. He shifted around again, unable to get comfortable. Even if that was enough to protect them, those kids were too kind for their own damn good. They couldn’t sit around while people were suffering, and Stan knew he couldn’t stop them trying to help. He smirked to himself. _Selfless. Those too are the exact opposite of Stanford._ _Ugh. Stanford._ Immediately after thinking his twin’s name, their conflict earlier seemed to be the only memory Stan had anymore.

An idea popped into Stan’s mind, muffling the painful images of his brother for a brief second.

 _Oh fuck no._ Stan thought to himself with a huff.

 _But don’t you want to help?_ A voice inside him whispered.

 _That won’t help anyone but him._ Stan insisted to himself.

_Didn’t you say you’d do anything?_

Stan stopped arguing with himself, and sat up in bed, turning his light on. He half stumbled over to his dresser, and grabbed the first shirt and pair of pants he could get his hands on. He didn’t care how they looked. Pulling the clothes on, he walked back over to his light and flipped it off. _This had better work._

\--------

This was single-handedly, without a doubt, the worst idea Stan had ever had. But he was just desperate enough to try.

He awkwardly leaned into a tree in the woods outside the shack. He had no idea what to do or what to expect, so he just hoped that his offer and his desperation were enough to get his attention.

\--------

Bill Cipher’s eye lit up with delight. He felt very smug when he heard his name, thought in almost a scream, by the Pines man. Bill had been keeping an eye on the family ever since that damned Pine Tree broke open his precious bubble to save Shooting Star. He knew then that the family would be a threat to his rule. A small threat, sure, but a threat nonetheless. But this, this was downright hilarious. Humans are so weak. He would never understand it, the way they would throw themselves in the fire just to avoid seeing someone else burn.

“Hold down the fort guys,” Bill said cheerily to his horde of demons. “I’ve got a hot date.”

\--------

“Well, well, well,” the demon practically purred. “To what do I owe the honor of the great Man of Mystery calling my name?”

Stan Pines seemed very uncomfortable at the nickname, and grumbled something under his breath. He shifted his position against the tree he leaned on. _A pine tree. How utterly appropriate._ Bill thought to himself, practically overflowing with amusement and joy.

“Alright. I want to make a deal with you,” Stan half mumbled the words, feeling uneasy and on edge.

“Oh ho ho!” Bill circled around the Pines man once, coming back to face him, basking in the fear that wafted off of the man as he got closer to his face. “Whatcha got for me?”

The man glared up at Bill, clearly not as amused as the demon was, feigning braveness. “I want you to not hurt those kids. Mabel and Dipper. I want them completely safe from whatever horrifying plans you have for this town.”

Bill glowed with cheeriness. “Well, for starters, my intentions stretch far beyond this pathetic little town.” Bill moved closer to Stan, causing him to waver and shift away from him slightly. “And, of course, I’d like to know what you have to offer me. You’re kind of asking a lot, you know! Those little parasites love to get in my way, and you know how I love to make that little Pine Tree squirm.” Bill could see the flash of anger in the man’s eyes at that last little mention of his great nephew, and that made him all the more pleased.

“My life. I will give you my life if you spare those kids.” Stan’s false confidence flared again, making him stand up taller.

Oh humans and their eagerness to throw themselves in the void. “No can do, Pines! It just isn’t a fair trade. Two lives for one? Come on, you must think I’m an idiot!”

The demon could practically feel the man’s face stop and his anxiety rise as Bill turned away, as though he was leaving. But of course, the man would offer more.

“Stop! No, don’t go. I-I…” Stan seemed to be thinking really hard about what to say to keep the demon from leaving. “Anything you want,” the man said finally, with conviction. “I will give you anything to protect those kids.”

Bill’s laugh rang throughout the otherwise silent woods they stood in. Of course, this is what he was waiting for. And he knew exactly how to word the deal. “Hmm. Okay, Pines. Your desperation,” Bill paused to enjoy the man’s glare at that word, “has caught my interest. So let’s strike up a deal, shall we? You give me yourself, and I’ll give you the lives of your Shooting Star and Pine Tree. Sound fair?”

Stan seemed surprised at the demon’s change of heart, but put his hand out towards the demon. “Deal.”

 _Oh this is too easy._ Bill reached out and shook the man’s hand, extending his blue soul fire from his hand, spreading the flames along Stan’s arm. As soon as the man pulled his hand back and opened his mouth to speak, Bill snapped his fingers.

Stan Pines’s heart stopped immediately. His body crumpled into nothing more than a quickly cooling corpse.

The demon didn’t waste any time. He picked up the fallen man’s body and felt, rather than saw, the man’s soul slowly drifting away. With a quick action, he completely consumed it, feeling warmth radiating through his own soul. He took only a moment to savor it before pulling himself into the human’s corpse. Bill stood up, getting used to the feeling of his new legs. The body didn’t make his soul sing the way Pine Tree’s had, but it would do.

 _Whatever you’re up to, little humans, I’m going to put an end to it._ Bill grinned widely with his new mouth, and enchanted his eyes to appear as they had with the presence of its previous occupant.

The demon’s laughter vibrated his new body and echoed in the quiet woods as he walked with a light heart back to the Mystery Shack.

 

\--------


	2. Bill

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM SO SORRY I TOOK SO LONG. I should be posting Chapter 3 very very soon to make up for it. I've been busy/obsessively reading fics instead of writing mine. I'm the worst. But here it is and please enjoy.

_Ahhh. How sweet it is to be back home._ Bill thought to himself, grinning maniacally. _Shack sweet Shack._ He closed the front door behind him, taking in his surroundings with a satisfying deep breath. The demon could smell the distinct scents of each member of the Pines family lingering in the halls of this place.

He had forgotten what that sense felt like in the time since he had last been in a human body. Pine Tree’s body, to be exact. His mood lifted even further upon recalling the memory. Something about being in the boy's form had felt… so right. He would have to find a way back to that. _Maybe when this is all over we can strike up a deal… I bet the boy would do a lot to protect his precious Shooting Star…_ Bill could just picture it now. Ruling over his new universe in that body. True, the kid was basically a kitten in appearance and physical strength, but just a few weeks in Bill’s possession could surely turn that around…

Maybe it was something about Pine Tree specifically, or maybe it was just being in a young, fresh meatsack. Bill grimaced slightly as he rubbed his body's back. _This fucking thing is always aching somewhere. Humans deteriorate so quickly, it's amazing they haven't died off completely yet._

It wouldn’t be hard to act like a grouchy old man while in this crusty old body, which made Bill’s job easier. Pushing the nagging achy pains out of his head, Bill walked to the vending machine door, knowing exactly where to find good ol’ Sixer. His thoughts were loud enough to be heard miles away.

 

\--------

 

The sound of the vending machine opening startled Ford, making him jump suddenly in his seat. He hissed through his teeth at the flash of pain from hitting his knees into the bottom of his desk. He turned around to see his twin descending the stairs, and a weird unfamiliar feeling tugged at his heart. Ford turned back to his work without speaking to his brother. _I thought that brute idiot went to bed._

“What are you doing holed up down here again?” Stan asked, with a tinge of annoyance in his voice. He sounded… odd. Husky. _Must be because he couldn’t sleep._

“I’m trying-,” Ford started but paused to shift some of his notes around, still trying to focus on his work more than his brother, “-to figure out a way that we can stop Bill.” Ford furrowed his eyebrows, clearly deep in thought, and was silent for a brief moment before speaking again. “And you’re interrupting me. I thought you went to bed.”

Stan shrugged, walking around to glance at the notes Ford had scattered haphazardly over his desk. “It isn’t easy to sleep when the end of the world is right outside your window. Literally.” Stan gave his brother a half-hearted smirk at his comment, but Ford wasn’t amused.

“Oh as opposed to the figurative apocalypse, which is what I thought you meant, because I am an idiot.”

The man let out a shaky sigh, frustration and exhaustion coming through in the sound all too well. “Look, Stanford-,” he paused when the other man glanced up at him, “-I don’t want to keep fighting with you. P-the kid was right. If we keep going at it, we’re just ruining our chances at helping anyone, _and_ ruining our chances of interfering with that demon and whatever he has planned. We can go back to hating each other when this is all said and done. Sound good?”

Ford looked down at his work again, biting his lip with a guilty look on his face. “You’re right. I know you’re right. Listen… Stanley, I’m sorry. For not thanking you. I would still be a statue if it weren’t for you… Actually, no. I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for you. And… um… I just uh wanted to s-say…” Ford lost track of his apology. He hadn’t had a lot of social interactions over the last 30 years and he could feel himself stumbling over his words. He felt his face heat up, so he snapped his mouth shut and glared down at his hands, not really seeing them, and mentally scolded himself at his lapse in coherent speech.

Stan clapped his shoulder when he glanced up at his twin again. He was grinning uncharacteristically at Ford. _Or at least,_ Ford thought to himself with a hint of resentment, _it’s uncharacteristic for Stan to look at **me** like that._ “It’s alright, Stanford. Let’s just not focus on that until we have the time to. Now here-,” Stan pulled another chair up next to Ford’s, “-show me what you’re working on, and let’s see what I can contribute.”

 

\--------

 

"Grunkle Stan? Grunkle Ford?" The two men turned around at the sound of the voice at the top of the stairs. Dipper stood in the doorway, rubbing his eyes with his fists which were lightly curled up. "What are you doing? Did you sleep?"

Ford glanced at his brother before looking back at the kid. "What time is it?" was his only response.

Dipper tilted his head slightly at the twins. "About 11 in the morning. Have you been down here all night?" Dipper briefly felt a wisp of relief at his two grunkles seemingly getting along so well.

Ford didn't move or respond to Dipper, but Stan got on his feet and walked over to the kid, who had now walked down the stairs. He ruffled the boy's hair, giving him a wide grin. "Sleeping all day, huh kid?"

Dipper grumbled at the head pats, still exhausted but not wanting to waste the day sleeping. Especially not when it's unsafe. "I didn't sleep very much over the last 4 days... too afraid to let my guard down..."

Stan smiled down at him again, and Dipper was sure his eyes were bloodshot and he still had lines on his face from the wrinkles in his pillow. "Ah, kid. You seem really beat. You're no help to stop the apocalypse if you can’t even keep your eyes open!" Dipper glanced up at his grunkle, noticing an odd tone in the man's voice. _He must have not slept at all. His voice sounds so... scratchy._

Dipper just shook his head. "I want to be up and helping you two. I'm fine." He  stifled his yawns and suffocated them in his throat.

Stan glanced at his brother, who was already back at work with his notes. "Kid. It's okay, honestly. You need the rest. You're safe here. And you can help us out when you wake up and don't look like one of those zombies you summoned up earlier this summer. And hey-," Stan messed up his hair again, uncovering part of Dipper's birthmark, "-if you're worried at all, bring your sister downstairs with you and sleep on the couch. Just leave the vending machine open and we will hear it if anything happens up there. Sound fair?"

After a moment's hesitation, Dipper nodded and walked back up the stairs, leaving the secret door wide open.

 

\--------

 

Stan's dark brown eyes flashed blue as his temper flared slightly.

_I've got to think of a way to keep those damn kids out of here, and out of my way._

 

_\--------_

 

Dipper woke up on the couch in a cold sweat. His nightmares hadn’t exactly subsided lately, but at least Bill seemed to be staying out of them… directly. Dipper didn’t think that Bill was purposely visiting his dreams, he was likely too busy for that. However, the yellow monstrosity still lurked in every dark corner of the boy’s mind, and his nightmares reflected the fear he felt during waking hours.

He hesitantly opened his eyes to glance at his twin, who was curled up on the opposite end of the couch. It wasn’t a big piece of furniture, but she somehow managed to avoid touching him as she had herself wrapped in a tight ball. Sympathy washed over Dipper as he looked at his twin, eyes closed tightly and lines showing her stress openly on her forehead.

 _She needs something… someone. I can’t convince her this isn’t her fault, and if I bring it up to Grunkle Stan or Grunkle Ford, they might just start fighting again. They’re getting along, it seems, which is… weird. But it’s probably very delicate, and I don’t want to ruin it._ Dipper repressed a sigh, mind working over what he could do to help his sister, not coming up with any plan that would ensure her safety. Becoming frustrated, Dipper rolled back over onto his side, scooting a little closer to Mabel so that their legs brushed together, and forced his fear of his nightmares down enough to drift to sleep.

 

\--------

 

The sound of a door slamming made Mabel and Dipper both bolt upright, screaming. They immediately clung to each other without a thought, looking around the house and shaking before noticing someone coming in through the front door.

“Hellooooo Pines!” Wendy Corduroy grinned at them from in front of the open door, pushing the door closed with her hips before walking towards the living room. She had a couple of weapons strapped to her back and in her hands, with a silvery knife attached to her hip in a small sheath. She was a little dirty and scraped, but had the hugest grin on her face.

The twins started to relax until Stan and Ford ran into the room, shouting at them, asking what happened, before they saw Wendy and seemed less tense, but still worried and frazzled.

“Wendy!” Mabel and Dipper yelled in unison, running up to the red head and wrapping their arms around her.

Wendy ruffled Dipper’s hair and smiled down at the twins. “Sheesh, dudes. I didn’t mean to make you panic. You guys look good though, how have things been since I left?” She glanced over at the grunkles, her face contorting in suspicion as she noticed Ford’s strangely bruised face, and Stan’s oddly cheerful one.

Before anyone else got the chance to speak, Stan strode over and clapped Wendy firmly on the back, grinning. “Hey, kid! Looks like you haven’t been having too rough of a time out there.”

Wendy’s suspicion faded as she grinned back at the old man. “Ah, I figured I’d check up on my family, but they didn’t really need me. Corduroys… some tough folks.” Her smile brightened as she pulled away from the twins, looking over them fondly. “I wanted to make sure my favorite family of mystery was holding up just as well. I gotta say though, dudes, I have had a blast out there! I think my monster count is up to…” She paused as she shuffled around her pockets and pulled out a small sheet of paper, covered in red flecks and tally marks, “Ah! 12 now. Cipher’s monsters ain’t worth shit,” she commented smugly.

“You- you’ve killed that many of them?!” Dipper asked incredulously.

Stan didn’t seem anywhere near as impressed as the rest of the Pines, however, as he narrowed his eyes at the teen, seeming displeased. “You should be more careful. Some of those demons out there won’t be as easy to take dow-.”

“Oh, nah I’ve taken down one of those bad boys. Took me a lot of work and a flamethrower but the spawn of hell are no match for Wendy Corduroy!” Her smile was radiant now, clearly proud of what she had accomplished over the past couple of days. Her reassurances didn’t seem to make Stan feel better, however, as he looked more angry than before.

Before Stan could ask more about it or likely call her a dumb kid for being so unsafe, Ford was speaking, telling him that he needed to go back and work. Ford didn’t know Wendy, so her presence didn’t do anything to distract him from focusing on his work. He muttered something about dumbass brave kids and started heading back down to work in the lab. Stan glanced at his twin leaving the room and seemed anxious to follow. “Alright… I need to go help him. You kids be safe… don’t go confronting any monsters- especially demons!” He cast one last glance at Mabel and Dipper, looking vaguely pissed off, before quickly following after his twin.

“What’s gotten into him?” Wendy addressed the twins now, “He seems… I don’t know, weird?”

Dipper shrugged and glanced at his twin, who was staring at the ground looking guilty as hell. “Apocalypse stress?”

The teen didn’t get the chance to press the issue further, as Mabel had started breaking down into shaking sobs again. “Wh- hey, hey! Dude, what’s up?” Wendy’s eyebrows furrowed with concern, she leaned down and pushed Mabel’s hair out of her face.

“I-It’s my- they’re fighting a-and it’s all my fault! Everything is!” Mabel practically shrieked as tears streamed down her cheeks.

“Woah, hey, who’s fighting?” Wendy wiped her tears away, and started a little as she seemed to remember Ford’s fucked up face. “Stan and his brother?”

Dipper wrapped his arms around Mabel’s shoulders and answered for the sobbing girl. “Yeah, they were fighting before… although now they- they almost seem like they’re getting along really well which is weird.” He paused, looking deep in thought. “ _Really_ weird. They just fought yesterday.”

Wendy tilted her head in confusion, now rubbing the top of Mabel’s hair as she tried to soothe her. “That doesn’t explain why Mabel would think this is her fault.”

“Because it _is_ ,” Mabel insisted, covering her face with her hands and slumping into her brother’s side.

“She blames herself. For everything. The grunkles were fighting over it- over Mabel blaming herself… so she blames herself for that too.” Dipper cast his eyes down at the top of his twin’s head. “And I sure can’t convince her it isn’t her fault.”

Wendy kneeled down to make eye contact with the crying girl. “Hey, kid.” Mabel actually glanced up at her, sobs quieting. “I know this shit isn’t your fault, your brother knows, your Grunkle Stan knows-” she didn’t address Ford’s opinions, “-but I know that isn’t going to make you feel better because _you_ don’t know it isn’t your fault. So,” Wendy shifted one of her weapons off of her back, and it looked vaguely like the grappling hook Ford had given Mabel before. “I think if you don’t believe that this isn’t your fault, you can at least feel inspired to try to fix what happened, make up for it.” Mabel was barely crying at this point, the tears had slowed to almost a complete stop.

“How?” She asked, voice still a little shaky.

The teen grinned at her, “Let’s go kick some ass, save some damsels, wreak havoc on Cipher’s plans!”

It took no more convincing, for either Mabel or Dipper.

 

\--------

 

Assuming it was a better idea to not alert the older twins to their plans, Dipper and Mabel left with Wendy quickly after getting some weapons from her and from around the shack. Dipper hoped quietly to himself that their grunkles would be too busy working in the lab to notice they were gone, and that they would be able to make it back soon enough to avoid confrontation.

Dipper was walking a few paces behind the girls who were whispering excitedly, Mabel seeming much less gloomy than she had been in a few days. He told himself that he was walking behind them to keep a better lookout on the two, and maybe that was at least partially true, but Dipper just didn’t feel up to the excited chatter from the girls. He felt like shit over the fact that he hadn’t thought of doing this to cheer Mabel up. He also felt like shit because he hadn’t taken initiative like Wendy had.

 _I could have been out here, just like her, taking down monsters and demons and saving innocent people. But I’ve been holed up in that shack just hoping for safety and counting on Ford to figure out a plan for us._ He was at a loss. Ford hadn’t let him help with research, mostly due to Stan’s concerns, and so he had just given up on trying to help. People were out there, hurt or dying, and he did nothing.

 _I hid in a safe place and trembled in fear of that stupid triangle._ Dipper went on like that for most of the walk, mentally berating himself while also keeping an eye on his sister and his friend. He was violently pulled out of his thoughts when he distantly heard Mabel yell something and start running off of the path, and he mentally kicked himself again for not being alert enough, before running after his twin.

“Mabel! Mabel? What’s wr-” He was interrupted as he caught up to Mabel and saw her crouched on the ground, hugging someone. Blonde hair falling over his twin’s shoulder.

Dipper visibly relaxed, “Pacifica.”

 

\--------

 

“What’s wrong with her? Is she injured?” Dipper asked frantically, gesturing at the sobbing, incoherent blonde.

Mabel sighed, shaking her head. “She’s just… being dramatic. Freaking out. Something. I don’t know, I’ll figure it out.” Dipper mumbled something about not being able to help with people’s emotional baggage and Mabel could see him wandering away out of the corner of her eye.

Mabel vaguely heard her twin and Wendy saying something about scoping the area out, asking her if she would be alright here with the girl. She brushed their concerns off without once glancing at them, waving them on to go do whatever hero stuff they wanted. She didn’t care. She couldn’t focus on anything right now beyond the girl shaking in her arms.

After she was sure they had left the immediate area, Mabel forced herself to lightly push the girl away, so that she could look her over. “Pacifica? Hey, I need you to tell me if anything is too badly bruised or broken. I have some stuff in my backpack- bandages and disinfectants and-.”

The blonde looked up at her with so much pain mixed with a strange, fond light in her eyes. Pacifica wrapped her arms around Mabel’s shoulders almost desperately and it startled both of them. “How did you find me? You’re… how are you surviving out here?! Why are you even out here? Did you ever make it home? Is the Shack still standing? Oh my god, how are you _okay?_ ” Pacifica choked on a rough sob after speaking so fast it made Mabel’s head spin. She’d had no idea what had happened to the girl, but she seemed really messed up. Mabel immediately felt horrible that she had been so wrapped up in her own guilt that she hadn’t done anything to find out if the other girl was okay. Vaguely, she wondered how Candy and Grenda were holding up and if she should go try to find them. She felt selfish, and stupid.

It was the first time since this all started that the guilt completely left her mind, and she felt like she could think clearly again.

Mabel stroked the blonde’s long hair as she started sobbing into her shoulder again. She felt a surge of fierce protectiveness towards the girl. Mabel mumbled some soothing, comforting words to her, willing her to calm down enough to speak clearly again.

“My family…” Pacifica started, tears welling up again. “I don’t know where they are anymore. And I don’t _care._ ” The snarl from her gave Mabel a jolt of shock. Before she could even ask anything, words were falling out of the girl’s mouth as quickly as before. “They wanted to join that- that _monster!_ ” She shrieked, anger suppressing her tears momentarily. “My father was so ready to just join that fucking triangle! And he got what he deserved. His face- it- it’s horrifying! Mutilated. I think he… he… I don’t think he made it out of the town square after that. How could he? But he deserved it. My mom abandoned me, I think she went back to the manor to, I don’t know, save her belongings. I’m not important to them at all… She left me alone! I didn’t know what to do… I tried to find you. I tried to- I wanted to find Dipper,” she stopped rambling at this point, instead wrapping her arms more firmly around Mabel’s chest and sobbing even harder somehow. “Please don’t leave me…”

Mabel listened to her rantings without comment, feeling a mixture of sorrow and anger at what had happened to the Northwests and especially to Pacifica. But her conflicting feelings froze when Pacifica practically whispered those last words into her chest. Protectiveness and anger surged in her entire body, and she pulled the girl’s face up to look at her.

“Paz. Pacifica. Stop. You need to relax. Hey…” Mabel rubbed her nose on the other girl’s affectionately, surprising both of them. “Uhhh…” Mabel started, rubbing the back of her neck awkwardly and blushing at Pacifica’s almost horrified expression. “Sorry… it calms Waddles down… Look, I’m not going to leave you, okay? You can come back to the Shack with us. Nothing is going to happen to you, I won’t let it. You’re safe now, okay?” Mabel gave her a warm smile, with a fierce light in her eyes.

Pacifica’s confused and awkward face melted as she rubbed her eyes and returned the smile gently. “Thank you, Mabel… you really are just. Amazing.”

Mabel helped the girl to her feet, and started guiding her back in the direction of the Mystery Shack. She glanced at Wendy who was on the back of- is that a dragon? _Nope, I don’t want to know._ She didn’t feel worried about Dipper or Wendy, knowing that they could take care of themselves and get home on their own, while also feeling confident in her ability to get them back to the Shack safely. Mabel handed Pacifica a knife, ignoring the girl’s disgusted expression at the object. They weren’t too far from home, and the others should be following behind them shortly.

On the walk back, Pacifica refused to let go of Mabel’s arm, not that Mabel would have tried to get her to let go.

 

\--------

 

By the time Dipper and Wendy returned home, Mabel had gotten Pacifica to shower and had her in some of Mabel’s pajamas- cute fluffy pink and purple ones with kittens on them- and they were in the kitchen when the duo walked back in the Shack. Mabel was actually at the stove cooking, much to Dipper’s shock, and Pacifica was sitting at the table holding a steaming cup as though it were the only thing keeping her grounded.

“Woah! A proper dinner during the apocalypse, nice dude! That’s nuts.” Wendy strode over to Mabel and ruffled her hair, earning a smile from the small girl.

The two girls started chatting happily about the food, and Dipper was sincerely glad to see Mabel so animated again. He glanced over at Pacifica with some concern at the girl’s state, but she didn’t seem too badly cut up and even offered him a small smile when she noticed him staring. Wendy suggested that Dipper go call to his grunkles to come eat, and he was happy to oblige. After some grumbling from both Stan and Ford about the importance of what they were doing, Dipper finally got them to reluctantly come up and take a break.

The meal was… strangely nice. Everyone’s tensions seemed to be lightened at least a little by the meal and light conversation. The group even got a good, sincere laugh in when Grunkle Stan started complaining about how much his old teeth hurt when he chewed, saying something about how he was pretty sure he got drastically older over the past few days, which honestly was the way they were all feeling at this point.

At the end of it, Wendy agreed to stay over and crash on the couch, but Dipper offered her his bed, opting to stay in the extra room where the body-switching carpet had previously been. To his surprise, Pacifica and Mabel agreed to share her bed for the night, which made him vaguely jealous about how close they seemed. They even managed to convince their grunkles to finally get some rest, insisting that working for days on end with no rest would hurt them more than help them stop Bill.

By the time Dipper was showered and in his temporary room, he expected to fall asleep pretty quickly. However, after lying in bed and staring at the ceiling for what he assumed was almost an hour, he rolled over onto his side and angrily stared at the wall. He and Wendy had caused a lot of chaos to the monsters they fought with today, and he’d been thrown around enough to be certain that his soreness and exhaustion would force him to sleep. So why wasn’t it coming to him?

He found himself wondering about his sister’s new state of mind. Wendy was right, doing some good to help with the state of the town really encouraged and inspired her. He was sincerely glad that she had been pulled out of her awful, guilty state, but felt a surge of annoyance that he hadn’t been the one to get her there.

 _Maybe I’m just useless._ Dipper thought to himself, repressing a sigh. His grunkles wouldn’t let him help with research, his sister was saved from herself by Pacifica Northwest of all people, and even the work he had done today with Wendy was more of her accomplishment than his. He had helped, to an extent, but he knew that she could have done all she had today and maybe even more if he hadn’t been there for her to worry about.

He felt like shit. He honestly felt like the only one who wasn’t doing anything to really help. He couldn’t save or protect his family. But there was no solution. Frustrated and lonely, Dipper glared at the wall of the room until he was finally pulled into another nightmare.

 

\--------

 

The Corduroy girl was a nuisance, to say the least. He hadn’t been expecting her- or anyone for that matter- to put up much of a fight against his monsters. And he had _especially_ not expected one of his demons to be brought down. With a lot of frustration, Bill wondered who had been killed by that obnoxious Red. But of course, he couldn’t do shit to check without giving away his deal with Stanley Pines.

He smirked to himself then, lying in the corpse of the old man, in Stan’s room. Not a single one of these idiotic bags of bones were onto him, and he couldn’t help but feel very smug at the thought. As frustrated as he was with what the Pines twins had accomplished today, he knew his plans were still on track to bringing them down.

Bill also felt a huge satisfaction with how isolated and desperate Pine Tree felt lately. Really, the anxiety was radiating off of the kid in waves. And Bill was eating it up. Maybe the kid would be desperate enough himself to make a deal like his idiot great uncle had been. The thought made the demon grin.

Not needing to sleep himself, along with his lack of worry about the state of his corpse puppet, Bill decided he’d have a little fun that night. Spending all day messing with Sixer was amusing without a doubt… but he missed good, old-fashioned torment.

With a happy heart, the demon focused his attention on the young Pines boy’s dreams. _I am going to serve you up your own special hell tonight, kid._

 

_\--------_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like I said, 3 should be up soon. I'm sorry if your hearts hurt (who am I kidding that's my goal)
> 
> Lemme know what you think! And thanks to my beta Hunter :)


	3. Mabel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alright, this one is twice as long as the previous chapters, so maybe you guys won't hate me for taking a week to do it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New chapter that's twice my typical length? My gift to my fellow suffering gravity falls fans.
> 
> I'd like to mention that I will keep this fic going until it's completed. The show ending CAN'T STOP ME.

Mabel woke up feeling much warmer than she usually did in the typically chilly Gravity Falls mornings. She instinctively snuggled the tiniest bit closer to the source of the heat before opening her eyes, squinting against the harshness of the bright sunlight that filtered in through the triangle-shaped window. There was an obnoxiously excessive amount of hair in her face this morning, and she tried- and failed- to brush the strands away in her half-asleep stupor. The fine strands looked almost white, Mabel noted, especially in the glow from the window. As soft as the hair was, it still tickled her nose incessantly. Not wanting the itchiness to wake her completely and destroy all hope of going back to her sweet, colorful dreams, Mabel shoved her face roughly into her pillow in an attempt to avoid the wispy stuff, rubbing her nose against the cushion to get rid of the residual itch.

_Wait… light hair?_

Mabel snapped her eyes open the second that realization struck. She couldn’t help but feel incredibly (and understandably) disoriented while she tried to convince her brain to make sense of her surroundings. To her dismay, the thing was clinging onto sleep mode. Less of clinging, actually, and more of a death grip. Mabel just tried her best to concentrate on waking up, not allowing her heavy eyelids to slip shut.

Now that she was starting to completely wake up, she managed to get a clearer look at the form in her bed. And- _Oh my goodness, what?_ She realized that she was not only cuddled up close to them, but their arms and legs were all tangled together-.

**_Why is there another person in my bed?_ **

_Another person who has quite a beautiful waterfall of golden-white hair…_

The person’s slow, deep, but gentle breathing indicated that they were still sound asleep. Mabel couldn’t help but wonder if it was horribly creepy or wrong of her to be staring this person down while they weren’t even conscious enough to see it. They didn’t even _know_ about it. She felt a rush of self-consciousness… and- oh, yep, even more guilt. That specific emotion seemed to tinge and influence all of her other feelings lately.

Mabel chose to toss those worries onto her constantly-growing _‘Not-Gonna-Ever-Address-That-One- **Ever** ’_ pile, and focused again on her mission to figure out _who the fluff_ she was wrapped around. That was when she noticed the person’s clothing: a set of fuzzy pink and purple kitten pajamas… Mabel’s pajamas.

 _Oh. That’s why this person is so soft and warm… and this position is so perfect. Might just tempt me to stay here all day instead of facing real stuff._ Even though she amused herself with the daydream of living out the remainder of her life in this exact spot, she stubbornly ignored her drowsiness again. It seemed her whole body was practically _begging_ her to go back to sleep at this point.

Strong, persistent Mabel Pines chose to stay alert, and mentally shook herself away from her wandering thoughts. _You aren’t going to ignore this extremely strange and potentially bad junk that you’re stuck in just because you’re sleepy. You’ve got this! It can’t be that hard to just function like a normal human bein’._

She rummaged through her memories of the previous day, searching for an explanation. Starting with waking up yesterday, Mabel mentally retraced her steps, knowing that it had to have happened recently for her to be in this predicament. Soon enough, something clicked into place, and the girl felt like an idiot at how utterly lost she had felt mere seconds ago. _Wendy came yesterday! We went to fight back. I found someone who was screaming and crying, they were hurting and afraid and I wasn’t going to just leave them there…_ **_Oh._**

_Pacifica Northwest._

Sadly, even knowing how and why Pacifica was in her bed, she was still at a loss. She had no experience with handling this particular kind of problem. Mabel remembered how hard the girl had been shaking when they found her. Lying next to Pacifica now, she had to shake away her inner voice, which was yelling: ‘ _Pull her closer, Mabel! Hugs and cuddles make everything at least a little better_.’ She wanted so desperately to help Pacifica… but she and the blonde had a tense, uncertain relationship. When Dipper or one of Mabel’s friends were upset, she relied on yummy food and physical affection as her secret weapons. A person couldn’t help but smile while eating her sparkly pancakes, or when the girl used her special hug where she wrapped around them like a koala.

Since she was at a loss right now, Mabel opted to lie there for just a moment longer, staying as still and quiet as any other sleeping person would have been.

Pacifica had asked to stay with Mabel because she was afraid of being left alone. Mabel assured her it wasn’t a problem. But how the hell was Mabel supposed to see this coming? Mabel and Pacifica hadn’t ever really been good friends, or even friends at all really. She was certain that the blonde would be mortified if she woke up like this and realized they were… cuddling. She was not certain, however, how that disgust and embarrassment would manifest itself. Of course, she only imagined the worst possibilities. Some of them were so bad that she shivered.

_Am I intimidated by Pacifica?_

Mabel was tired of thinking about serious stuff. The brunette knew logically that she couldn’t have been awake for more than ten minutes this morning, but it felt like she’d been mulling over her thoughts for five hours or more. Her trademark Mabel Stress-ache was even starting to pop up from worrying about too many things at once. Mabel always somehow managed to pack a week’s worth of stress into just a day. It was one of her talents.

Much too quickly, Mabel found herself on the fine line between dreams and reality. Unconsciously, she allowed her body to meld back into the warm human beside her. Sleep-Mabel laced her legs more comfortably with Pacifica’s, and even pulled the blonde girl close to her chest.

Since she was slipping back to her dreams, Mabel didn’t notice Pacifica shifting around as the blonde started to pull herself awake. She didn’t see the blonde craning her neck around to see who the hell thought they had the right to hold her.

She didn’t see the uncharacteristically humble shock on Pacifica’s face when she saw it was Mabel.

Of course, as soon as Pacifica started trying to gently wiggle her way out of Mabel’s arms, the girl jerked awake for the second time that morning. Mabel’s heart skipped a beat when her eyes locked with a pair of cold, blue ones. They were so close… and staring at her like she was a Gremloblin. Pacifica’s face was almost obnoxiously horrified, her entire face frozen in shock. Mabel shifted away until she felt her back press against the wall, removing all physical contact with the girl hurriedly. She just knew that her face was turning a dark shade of red.

“Ohmygosh I’m _so_ sorry! It was just-.” Mabel was cut off by Pacifica raising her hand up, palm in her face, presumably intending to get the brunette to stop speaking. Mabel felt the barest hint of irritation at the gesture, but the feeling was effectively buried underneath her mountain of embarrassment.

“Don’t worry about it,” the girl shifted uncomfortably- moving slightly further from Mabel, which did not go unnoticed- and started to sit up in the bed.

They didn’t get a chance to talk more about it- or about it at all really- because almost instantly after their rapid exchange of uncomfortable words, they heard a loud “Awwwww!” coming from the other side of the room. The girls immediately turned towards the source of the sound. Wendy, who was sitting up on Dipper’s bed and grinning at them, gave them two thumbs up, which only made the pair blush even harder, if that was possible. “You two were so adorable all cuddled up together! Aw, dang it I wish I could have taken a picture, but I lost my phone a couple days ago.”

Pacifica scrambled out of the bed as if had suddenly caught on fire, moving too quickly and making herself lightheaded. She stumbled a little and nearly stepped on Waddles, who had been sleeping on the floor. The look she gave Wendy could have turned the fiery red-head to ice, in Mabel’s opinion. “Speak a word of this, and you’ll regret it.” She glanced at Mabel again, the anger in her eyes being replaced with a look that Mabel interpreted as something like: _FEARAWFULAWKWARDFEARFEAR-._ Though oddly enough, even the terrified expression she directed at the Pines girl seemed much warmer than the death look she had shot at Wendy. _I guess she isn’t mad at me… even though I’m the one who put her in this situation,_ Mabel thought to herself, her eyebrows furrowing in confusion.

 “I, uh. I’m um gonna go take a shower… or something.” Pacifica’s face was flushed and she chose to stare angrily at the floor as she spoke, instead of risking more eye contact with either girl. As soon as the words tumbled out of her mouth, she half-ran to the other side of the room, and was out of sight before Mabel could get any words from her brain to her mouth.

Mabel could feel the knots in her stomach loosen the instant the other girl was gone.

Wendy walked over to Mabel’s bed and ruffled her hair, giving her an uneasy smile. “Hey dude, I was just teasing. You know that right? I wasn’t trying to make you uncomfortable or embarrassed. I mean it actually was _really_ cute, uh, sorry again, just being honest.”

The comment made Mabel’s face heat up again, and she gave Wendy an awkward, but sincere smile. “It was pretty comfortable I guess. I don’t get to cuddle anyone but Waddles.” She let out a light laugh, and it came out really breathy. (Had she been holding her breath? She didn’t really want to think about it.) Then she leaned down and scooped the pig up. “Not that Waddles isn’t an amazing cuddler! He’s the perfect little snug bug, aren’t you?” Mabel rubbed her nose against the pig’s, getting some perky sniffling and snorting sounds in response. She kissed the top of his head and then put him down on her pillow. She huffed out a quiet sigh before addressing Wendy again. “Never thought I’d wake up next to anyone like that, at least not anytime _soon_. It just surprised me, I guess. I can say that I _especially_ would have never predicted to wake up next to _her,_ but…” The girl just shook her head, and the movement made her dark, wavy hair even messier. Mabel ran her hand through the locks that fell in her eyes, wincing when her fingertips caught on some knots. _I really need to comb this disaster._ She pulled her fingers out of the curls and stood up. “It’s alright, Wendy, I really wasn’t offended or anything. I think Pacifica may be honestly upset, but she might just be flustered like I am.”

Wendy nodded in understanding, but her eyes showed that her mind was far away. Mabel gently coughed to pull the red-head out of it. “I’m going to go make something to eat… you wanna come?” Mabel asked, her eyes were bright. The teen glanced down at her, but her eyes still seemed pensive and unfocused. Mabel just flashed a warm (albeit awkward) smile, and that finally caught Wendy’s attention long enough for the girl to verbalize her confirmation. When Mabel sincerely smiled at someone, it was irresistible. Wendy was no exception, and she just grinned before following her out of the room and downstairs.

Mabel tried to not think about how nice cuddling with Pacifica had felt as she walked down and into the kitchen. She _definitely_ wasn’t going to think about how much she missed the girl’s warmth, either. _Yikes._

 

_\--------_

 

Dipper Pines woke up shivering yet covered in sweat, his shirt sticking to his chest. His eyes shot open, and he was met with the not-so-comforting sight of the ceiling in the spare room he was sleeping in. Dipper shuddered before closing his eyes again, not wanting to get up. He couldn’t seem to accept that his nightmare was just in his head. It just felt so real, in every aspect. He rubbed his arms vigorously, but they were dry despite how _sure_ he was that they were soaked in blood. Although, that feeling was nothing compared to the crystal-clear memory of the way his dream had smelled. He swore that it still lingered in his nostrils.

Despite the fact that it had only been a dream, Dipper was certain that he now knew the scent of burning human flesh all too well.

_He was running, running, running. Not sure which direction he was headed and too afraid to look around and place where he was. His lungs felt ready to burst and the endurance he gained this summer could only keep him going for so long._

Dipper wrapped his arms around his pillow and pulled it into his chest, wrapping his entire body around it. _Just a dream, just a dream, just a dream…_

_He didn’t know anything about his surroundings, except that they were better than the place he ran from. It was impossible for them not to be. He fell to the ground and wrapped his arms around himself, burying his face in his knees. He could feel the blood on his hands and forearms, quickly cooling and making him shiver. Images of his sister crying, screaming… Dipper fell into a stream of constant, broken sobs. His tears fell into his bloody palms, and they fell to the grass, now tinted red. Where the drops hit the ground, small puffs of blue fire arose._

_Long, black claws started running through his hair, almost… affectionately? Dipper’s eyes shot open._

In a heartbeat, Dipper was out of his bed and yanking the door to his temporary room open, not caring when the door slammed into the wall. He forced his mind to a blank slate, because all thoughts morphed back into his own hands holding silver instruments of varying shapes and sizes… those claws… Mabel’s tear-stained, cut up face…

_Mabel, Mabel, Mabel, Mabel-_

He didn’t slow down until he saw his twin, sitting close to Pacifica at their kitchen table, eating breakfast. He pushed the chair next to Mabel out of his way and half-tackled her with a hug, sobbing into her shoulder. Mabel tensed at first out of confusion and fear, but relaxed and wrapped her arms around her twin when she heard him sobbing.

“Hey… hey Dipdop, what’s wrong? Bro-bro?” Dipper had relaxed in her hold, until she started running her fingers through his knotted curls. The gesture made him rip away from her, shuddering. _Long, black claws…_

“I-I’m s-sorry Mabes… it was just a n-nightmare, I didn’t mean to scare you…” Dipper sat down on the floor of the kitchen and Mabel came up to him and draped an arm over his shoulder.

“It’s okay, Dip. You didn’t scare me, I was just worried. You oughtta go take a shower and I’ll make you some food, okay?” Dipper nodded, hesitantly pulling away from his twin. A quick glance at Pacifica showed her shock and- disgust?- at Dipper’s outburst. He blushed and ran off to the bathroom.

Dipper turned the shower on and sat down in the tub, letting the hot water run over him as he pulled his knees to his chest. He wished that it would help him actually feel clean. He felt like he was still covered in Mabel’s blood, and thinking about it made him abruptly pick up a bar of soap and start scrubbing his arms roughly. Of course, it didn’t help the sensation go away, since you can’t clean dreams off of you. When he looked down at the soap running off of his arms, he was almost surprised to find clear water going down the drain, instead of red-tinted water.

He wished he could scrub his subconscious clean. He’d always had bad nightmares… but this one really shook him to his core. The dream had just assaulted all of his senses, and he just knew that everything he experienced in the dream would be the same if he experienced it awake. Dipper didn’t understand how they could be so _vivid…_ they never were this clear unless he was actually in the mindscape.

In the back of his mind, Dipper knew exactly what that meant. But the things he had done in this specific dream were too gruesome and horrifying for him to entertain the thought that it wasn’t just a nightmare.

He sat in the water until his skin was a harsh pink color and softly pruned. Even then, he felt like if he never got out of the shower again… well that would be okay with him. Letting out a shaky sigh, Dipper turned the water off and finally stood up, so that he could towel himself off. He found that his legs were practically vibrating, and keeping himself upright was a challenge.

Not wanting to go upstairs into his room to get clothes, Dipper opted to just put his sleeping clothes from last night back on (he just ignored the light dampness on them) before heading back to the kitchen, where his twin, as promised, had made him a couple of pancakes. He smiled gently at her when he saw she had put some edible glitter on them. Dipper knew that she must be running low of the stuff, and since she loved it so much, it meant a lot that she was sparing some for him, even though he could do without the stuff.

He thanked Mabel and sat down at the table, avoiding eye contact with Pacifica. If he’d looked up, he’d have noticed that the blonde was doing the same. Mabel didn’t seem at all flustered by either of their awkwardness, as she hummed and cleaned up the kitchen. Dipper ate in silence, focusing on his sister’s happy humming and tried to drown out the sound of his sister screaming, which seemed to be playing nonstop in his mind.

 

\--------

 

Bill was almost deafened by the constant, irritating sounds of Pine Tree’s mental whining. Being in this close proximity to him after giving the boy a nightmare was a bad idea, and Bill was having a hard time focusing on what Sixer was working on. Tormenting the kid was the highlight of his day, but he almost regretted it when he woke up and started mentally _screaming._

He rubbed his hand over his face, immediately disgusted both by the feel of the man’s wrinkly skin and the loud cracking of his bones. _Humans are fucking **gross.**_ He clenched his jaw in frustration, and almost lit Stan’s corpse on fire when the action fucking _hurt his teeth!_

The demon reflected again on his memories of possessing Dipper’s body, which felt extraordinary compared to the old man’s, even being sleep deprived as he had been. Nothing in the deal with the Pines man explicitly said he couldn’t take over the boy’s body. Although, living with the boy in the back of his mind would be bittersweet since, of fucking course, he couldn’t just throw his soul out like the last time. That, and eventually Pine Tree’s body would end up just like this sack of shit… and that only took, what, like seventy years? Pathetic.

Stanford’s voice pulled Bill out of his thoughts, and his voice sounded much too excited and hopeful for the demon’s taste.

“Stanley! Hey! Are you even listening to me?” Sixer’s face was contorted in annoyance, and Bill couldn’t help but grin at that.

“Nope! What did you say?” Bill’s grin widened until his old, crusty face ached, and he reveled in the way the man’s face dropped before hardening into an angry stare.

“I think I know how we can stop Cipher. If I can reopen the portal and reroute it… I can suck that little yellow idiot right back out of this dimension. And opening the portal would be relatively simple to accomplish. All we’d have to do is get him here. Or, actually! I bet we could bring a concentrated form of it to him, like how I put the rift in a controlled orb… I need to look over my supplies and see what I can do…” Ford’s focus went back into his work, so he didn’t catch the anger flashing across his twin’s face.

He was also much too buried in his studies to notice his twin moving towards the machinery, making his own adjustments to the portal.

 

\--------

 

Dipper tried not to feel too jealous when his twin opted to stay at the Mystery Shack, rather than go out with him and Wendy to fight some monsters. Mabel had seemed ready to jump on the chance to go back out, her eyes alight with a passionate fire at the mention of doing more to save the inhabitants of Gravity Falls. However, Pacifica was quick to beg the girl to stay behind with her, and also unafraid to cry and whine until Mabel agreed. Despite Mabel’s sighs at the girl’s dramatics, she was much too kind-hearted to leave the girl there alone. Although, Dipper could swear he saw a red tinge to Mabel’s cheeks when Wendy grinned at her for staying behind.

It was hard for Dipper to be too hurt by his twin’s choice when he himself couldn’t get the images of a much worse betrayal out of his mind. His nightmare was fucking up his entire train of thought. He felt absolutely disgusted with himself, more and more so with every detail of the dream that came back to him. He knew he would never actually hurt Mabel, but he was beyond horrified by the fact that his own mind could even picture him doing things like that.

If he wasn’t imagining Mabel’s face, contorted and bloody, he could feel the black talons from his nightmare. They weren’t unfamiliar, and he could actually identify them from a few different nightmares he’s had in the past- usually the worst ones. He vaguely wondered if it was some sort of ominous sign from his subconscious.

A moment after pulling himself back into reality, he heard Wendy calling him over from a few feet away. She was kneeling behind the ruins of what appeared to be a small house, and when she caught his eye she waved him over. Dipper quickly trotted over to her and kneeled beside the girl.

“Alright, dude, you see that monster over there? The one that looks like Stan’s old dentures?” Wendy grinned at him, subtly gesturing towards the creature which was only about 15 feet away from their hiding spot. Dipper nodded. “Alright, I’m pretty sure that’s one of Bill’s demons.”

Dipper’s eyes widened. “Seriously? I mean, I thought Bill had a weird form, but that thing’s actually a demon?” Wendy just nodded quickly, attention turning back to it.

“I think we can take it down. Here,” she added, handing dipper what looked like a weighted net. “If you can get this around that sucker just enough to slow it down, I think I can run in with this flamethrower and turn ’em to ash. I don’t honestly know another way to kill the demons,” she said sheepishly, rubbing the back of her neck with her free hand. “The flamethrower worked on the last one, so I’m guessing it will now too. If not, you high-tail it out of here and I’ll follow right behind, okay?”

Dipper squinted at her. “I think it’ll work… but if it doesn’t I’m not going to leave you here.”

Wendy couldn’t help but smile at the passion in the boy’s eyes. “Don’t worry, dude. We’ve got this.”

The boy gave a curt nod before quietly moving around the back of the broken down home. He got about 4 feet behind the demon before it seemed to hear him and turn towards him. Dipper froze as he realized he was seen, and threw the weighted net as hard as he could. It fell on half of the demon’s body- body? Gums? The demon seemed like it would be able to pull the net off pretty easily, but some of the rope got caught between its teeth. Dipper tried not to laugh at how much it looked like dental floss.

Suddenly, Wendy came running out from the side of the crumbling building, flamethrower going full-force. Dipper stumbled back a few feet as he felt the heat rush over his body, avoiding being directly hit by the fire.

The demon didn’t get a chance to move, its screams filling the air as it burned and burned until nothing was left but a large pile of ash and a set of enormous, charred teeth.

After the excitement wore down, Dipper approached Wendy, who was kicking the dirty teeth around and grinning widely. “Well,” Dipper said awkwardly, “I guess your net is done for.”

Wendy laughed, the sound foreign and clear in the foul-smelling air. “It’s alright, little dude.” She tousled the boy’s hair, causing him to squirm uncomfortably. “I’ve got a stash of them back home. Hey, I think we should head back to the Shack. It’s getting late and I ought to go reassure my brothers that I haven’t died yet. Let’s get you back home, first.”

The walk back to the Shack was filled with Wendy’s excited recounts of her adventures and kills over the past few days, and Dipper’s awkward but sincere laughter.

Dipper tried to remember what made him laugh before this all started.

 

\--------

 

By the time Wendy left, the sun had already gone down. Mabel had somehow managed to convince the Stans to let her bring them food, even though she couldn’t talk them into joining the kids for dinner. Mabel tucked Pacifica into Dipper’s bed after the girl passed out around 8 p.m., and she confided in her twin that the girl had spent most of the day sobbing and shrieking, which had definitely worn her out. However, despite Pacifica being a handful, Mabel took great care of her and treated the girl very gently. Dipper couldn’t help but feel a strong surge of affection for his twin.

It wasn’t until their grunkles were in the lab- still hard at work- and Pacifica was sound asleep in bed that Mabel confessed her worries to Dipper about their food supply.

“It’s not just pancake mix and fun food that we’re running low on, Dipdop. We’re out of almost everything. We can’t feed 5 people, a pig and a goat for more than maybe another day or two, if that. We need to go get some food. Go to the grocery store or _something!”_ Mabel was teary-eyed, and Dipper could tell that she was emotionally drained. He moved over to put his arm around her.

“Mabes, relax, okay? Have you talked to Grunkle Stan or Grunkle Ford about it? I’m sure they would go with us to get some. I can go down to talk to them.” Dipper rubbed circles into her upper arm, trying to keep her calm.

Her eyes got really wide before she blurted out, “NO!” The volume made Dipper jump and he just stared at his twin, completely lost.

Before he got a chance to ask, Mabel continued, “Those two _never_ want to leave their work. I know that they would try to ration our food instead of letting us go try and get more.”

Dipper tilted his head at her. “Umm… that actually sounds like it isn’t such a bad idea? It would give them more time to work on their plans and then we could go if we get too low.”

Mabel just stared at her hands, looking incredibly distressed. “What if they want to eat Waddles?” Her voice came out in a distant-sounding whisper. “Or what if they make me stop feeding him? And Gompers? I don’t want them to die because those old farts can’t be bothered to leave the house!” When she looked at Dipper again, her eyes were overflowing with tears.

Since her outburst, Dipper had been worried something was seriously wrong- either with her or one of their grunkles. He couldn’t help but stare at his twin, trying to understand what the hell she was talking about or why she was having a breakdown. After Mabel explained why she didn’t want to talk to their grunkles about going to search for food, it took Dipper a few seconds to process what her words.

And once he did, it took _every fucking ounce_ of his self-restraint to not roll on the floor laughing. He felt himself starting to grin at her, but choked it down and pulled her in for a hug instead, letting her cry on him. _Oh god I can’t be a jerk about this but everything about this is just so MABEL._

“Hey. Mabel. Breathe,” he rubbed her back before pulling her away from the hug to look her in the eyes. “They wouldn’t do that, okay? I promise. Let’s go ask them. Or I can go ask by myself if you want me to. But you have to know they won’t hurt your pets. Even if they wanted to, I would stop them, alright?” Mabel sniffled a lot but seemed to have stopped crying for now. She just solemnly nodded, and then asked him to go talk to them without her.

The laughter was even harder to hold back when Dipper realized that she had run upstairs with Waddles and Gompers, presumably to hide them. He just shook his head and walked to the vending machine.

 

\--------

 

Bill had the old man’s hands stretched behind his back, trying to ease the tension in its dusty, old muscles when he heard the familiar (and very annoying) sound of the vending machine door being opened. Every goddamn time those kids came down there, he told them to leave, but they just kept coming back! Wasn’t Stan Pines supposed to be in charge of the tiny meatsacks?! If so, then why the fuck did they ignore his orders?

Being Stan drove Bill insane. Well, not that he wasn’t already insane. Maybe it would drive him back to sanity? Who could say? Nothing is real, after all.

Pine Tree walked down the stairs confidently, calling out their names as he walked into their field of vision. Bill found himself fantasizing about bending the boy’s legs the wrong way until they snapped off. The mental image was enough to give him a genuine smile to throw at the kid.

“What’s up, kid? Need something?” Bill asked, hiding the annoyance which surely had to be radiating off of him. But, of course, humans aren’t advanced enough to do anything like that.

“Yeah, actually. Mabel said she’s really worried about our food supply. We need to go out and get supplies. We’re low on practically everything.” Dipper smiled up at Bill before glancing at Ford, who wasn’t looking his way.

_Don’t worry, little Tree. If we run out of food, I can consume all of you._

Bill figured that Stan Pines wouldn’t want the kids running around during the apocalypse, so he feigned concern. “Well we can’t stop working right now-.”

Ford finally shifted around, cutting Bill’s words off. “Actually, Stanley, you can go with them if you want. I’m just working on the actual structure of the machine right now, which isn’t something you could necessarily help with.” He shrugged before turning back to his desk.

Bill narrowed his eyes. _Like hell you will. I’m not letting you hide anything from me, Sixer._

“Nah, Fordsy. I want to try and help you out in any way I can. I think I could help with assembling if nothing else, and I could speed your process along. But kid,” he turned back to Pine Tree, trying to sound caring. “If you and your sister want to go alone, you can. But you’d need to go tonight. Or, just _at_ night, I guess. Cipher’s monsters seem to flock to his castle at night rather than roaming the street. I have no idea why.” _Actually, we have some phenomenal parties. That’s the first thing I’m doing when I get back from ripping your family apart, Pine Tree._ Bill smiled down at the kid.

Dipper rubbed the back of his neck, looking deep in thought. “Yeah… Yeah, I think Wendy said the same thing actually. If Mabel and I just go prepared, we will be completely fine. Oh! Hey, Grunkle Stan, should we wait for Wendy? I think she should come back here tomorrow.”

 _Oh hell no, so she can kill more of my guys?_ “Nah, kid. Don’t worry about going with your sister. You kids raise hell, I’m sure you’ll be perfect out there. If you wait, she may not come back for a couple of days.” Bill tried not to smile as he looked over the boy’s concerns in his mind. “If you wait too long, we might have to resort to eating that pig…”

Dipper’s eyes went wide, “Grunkle Stan! That would kill Mabel. But, no, no you’re right. Mabel and I will go tonight, then. We will find what we can in the old grocery store.”

As Bill shooed Dipper back up the stairs so that they could ‘focus on their work,’ he couldn’t help but glance affectionately at Stanford.

_He doesn’t give a fuck about sending two kids into the apocalypse alone. A man after my own heart._

 

_\--------_

 

The journey to the grocery store was much easier than Mabel expected it to be, but when she mentioned that to her twin, it seemed to set him on edge. She suppressed the urge to roll her eyes at him when he started rambling about demons, opting instead to give him a friendly punch to his upper arm while assuring him that the creepy dorito was too busy partying in his castle in the sky to notice a couple of hungry kids.

Mabel’s teasing always seemed to ease the tenseness out of Dipper, even as he rubbed his arm where she punched him. “Mabes, that kind of hurt. Save your strength for carrying all the pancake mix you can grab.” Her eyes lit up at that, and now she was rushing him inside the building.

The grocery store wasn’t exactly demolished, but a few scattered chunks of the roof had collapsed- likely from something with a weight to it being thrown at the building. Or something had flown into it. Mabel shivered at the thought of the eye-bats that roamed the town.

While the structure of the building was standing (although barely), the inside of the store made Mabel picture a hurricane coming through at the same time that two small armies battled. The fallen and crushed shelves didn’t mean much to Mabel, but the streaks of red made her uneasy. She avoided looking at them.

Dipper, on the other hand, expressed an outrage and frustration that vastly overshadowed his fear and queasiness. “I thought I knew what a monster was after what we’ve seen this summer…” Dipper pulled his eyes away from the carnage, and instead chose to look down at the weapon he held in his hands. He turned it around in his fingertips absentmindedly before he abruptly tightened his grip around the blunt end, knuckles turning white.

Mabel knew the look her twin had in his eyes- that determination. While she admired her brother’s courage, she couldn’t help but think of a wet kitten when she looked at his clenched jaw and sharp eyes. She felt a vague urge to giggle, but the moment of giddiness left as quickly as it came when she remembered why her brother was bristling in the first place.

“I’m really glad that the Mystery Shack is so far from the center of the town, and the chaos.” She shifted closer to Dipper and wrapped her arms around his neck, burying her face into his shoulder. She told herself it was to comfort him, but she knew that she needed it more than he did. If nothing else, she was able to fully avert her gaze from the grim details of their surroundings, with the fabric of his shirt shielding her eyes.

The embrace only lasted for a short moment before Dipper gently patted the top of her head and pulled away. Her brother seemed less anxious now, and the near-frantic look in his eyes had subsided. Neither of them spoke at first, and the lingering silence seemed to make both of the twins uncomfortable.

_Awkward sibling hugs._

Mabel shifted on her feet for a moment, and she felt like she was _just_ on the verge of coming up with something she could say to lighten the mood.

Oddly enough, Dipper beat her to it. “Y’know, Mabes I bet sprinkles were a low priority for the people who went scavenging in here,” he started walking further into the building, casting an amused glance back at his twin.

She gasped dramatically and clapped her hands on her cheeks. “I can put them in _everything_! Sprinkle spaghetti! Peanut butter and sprinkle sandwiches! Sprinkle covered Spam!”

Dipper stared at his twin, looking horrified, as she caught up to him. “What’s the point of us even getting food if your cooking makes us throw it right back up?!”

“Aw, c’mon Dippin’sauce, sprinkles barely change the flavor of things! It’s like adding a pinch of sugar!”

Her twin laughed more sincerely than she’d heard from him in what felt like forever. “A _pinch_? I didn’t know that word was even in your vocabulary when it came to sugar and sprinkles! You can barely see the food under all of it before you’re content! Plus, _sugary Spam_? It doesn’t matter how few sprinkles you add, that would still be disgusting. Vomit-inducing. Horrible.”

Mabel stuck her tongue out at him. “Maybe if you were the one making it. I, however, have talent in all things sprinkle-related! It’s an Alpha Twin skill, you wouldn’t understand.” As if to make a point, she stood up a little taller, trying to show off her (practically nonexistent) height advantage.

He just shook his head at her, but Mabel could see an amused smile on his face despite the fact that he had his head bent down, watching his feet as he tried to navigate around the rubble.

Following almost exactly where he stepped, Mabel trusted him to lead them through the building safely. She rarely looked up from the faint footprints her brother left in the dust, focusing on landing just inside of them. She amused and distracted herself by making a game of the walk, enjoying the challenge of hiding her own footprints within Dipper’s. This way, she could neatly ignore anything _unpleasant_ on the maroon-tinted ground… which she could faintly see out of the corner of her eyes. She pretended that she couldn’t.

Caught up in her amusement, Mabel didn’t register any of the words her brother had said to her. In fact, she had hardly noticed that he had spoken at all. “Hmm?” she hummed questioningly, although she didn’t even spare a glance in his direction. Her attention was on getting into the next spot where the thin layer of powdery, tan dust had been disturbed. Dipper must have turned to head in a different direction- she could tell by the way his footprint looked. It was only about half the size of the usual ones, with no visible heel print, as though he had turned quickly on the balls of his feet. Mabel grinned widely as she stepped delicately into the spot, balancing only on the toes of her right foot as she lifted her left leg to land in the next “safe” patch on the floor.

Before Mabel’s eyes even had a chance to focus on the placement of her twin’s left footprint, she felt her balance fail, and she started to topple forward-right into the boy. Which, of course, elicited a shrill yelp from her, paired with a pretty hilarious and _utterly_ adorable squeal from Dipper. Mabel managed to catch herself quickly enough to avoid falling face-first on the floor. Dipper wasn’t as lucky, or as well-balanced. As he twisted his body in an attempt to side-step his stumbling twin, he had somehow managed to catch his right foot around his left ankle. Dipper essentially tripped over his own legs, and in an instant he felt a burst of pain as his back slammed into the hard floor. The dust which had settled on the ground was suddenly swirling in the air around where he had hit the concrete, burning his eyes and making him sneeze.

Mabel’s eyes widened as she looked at her brother for the first time since they had started walking. Her immediate and involuntary reaction as she lost her balance was to use his chest or shoulders to push herself back upright on her feet. Mabel’s heart dropped as she saw Dipper fall backwards towards the floor. The girl reached for him, trying to grab hold of his shirt to keep him upright, but he stumbled and collapsed much too quickly for her reflexes.

She started when she first saw Dipper hit the rough concrete floor, her mind racing.

_Ohmygosh he was trying to get my attention but I was too zoned out-_

_Oh syrup, it sounded like he landed really hard, was it hard enough to break somethi-_

_What the hiccup do I do if he can’t stand up or **walk-**_

_Poor clumsy Dipper- who trips over their own feet?!_

_How can someone be so unbalanced?!_

_I only have bandages! I can’t make a cast!_

Mabel’s inner monologue was interrupted by an abrupt, high-pitched sound. She froze as the previously shrieking thoughts in her head fell silent. That was impressive in and of itself since Mabel herself had been hopelessly losing the ability to stabilize them. Her clarity was deteriorating much too rapidly for her to keep up with. Her mind’s state fell from one of coherency to one on the verge of sheer panic in less than sixty seconds. Only to be cut off by that noise.

Mabel grinned at her brother and started laughing, slowly at first before she fell into full-on, loud cackling.

Dipper shot her a look that could kill, “Mabel, don’t you dar-.”

“That… w-was s-s-s-so ADORABLE!” She was having a really hard time getting words out through the bubbling laughter. She rubbed her eyes as they started watering. She shrieked and squealed at him. “That was cuter than any kitten sneeze I have _ever_ fluffing heard!”

Her twin stood up quickly, trying to brush the dust off of his clothing. His face was completely serious and unamused, but he had a light pink blush on his cheeks. “I’m going to look for actual fresh fruit or vegetables.” He glared at his sister, whose maniacal laughter had faded into soft giggles. “What I was _trying to say_ before you pushed me is that this is where you’ll have the most luck finding junk food or fun stuff. So go wild. Get what you can. I’m going to go find things with actual nutrients.” Mabel had stopped laughing as he spoke, but when he glanced up at her again, she dissolved into more laughter. Dipper let out a very drawn-out sigh before turning to search around the rest of the building.

Mabel was used to Dipper being sensitive about his fragile masculinity, but he’d never reacted quite this harshly before.  She felt a rush of guilt at upsetting him, but made herself relax by focusing on her hunt for sprinkles and pancake mix.

 

\--------

 

The twins each gathered impressive amounts of both healthy and unhealthy foods, and they managed to fill the empty sacks they had brought with them to the point where they were difficult to close. The two of them didn’t see each other after their minor dispute until they met back up where they first went into the building. Dipper smiled half-heartedly at his sister, feeling both guilty at snapping at her, and still upset about her teasing. It made him feel terrible, but he sincerely enjoyed his time away from her more than when they had been looking around the building together. He couldn’t even look at his twin without either thinking about torturing and killing her in his dream, or how abandoned he felt with Mabel getting closer to Pacifica… and more distant from him.

Mabel didn’t seem as though she was upset with him, however, as she was overflowing with excitement about her accomplishments. Dipper found himself getting caught up in her giddiness as they compared their finds and talked about all of the types of things they would be able to make again.

Dipper didn’t even realize how much he had let his guard down until Mabel suddenly shrieked and whipped around. He saw a hand quickly leave her shoulder as Mabel held one of Stan’s guns up to the owner of the hand’s face. She lowered it to the person’s stomach as both twins simultaneously recognized who it was.

“Blandin? What do you want?” Mabel’s voice dripped with anger, and it was a tone that Dipper had never heard from her before. It made him shiver.

“S-sorry! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you! I just needed to talk to the two of you. I have been looking for you for days.” Blandin didn’t even bother to hide the fear in his eyes.

“Why would you be looking for us, and why are you staring at us like we have spiders falling out of our eyes?” Mabel’s voice didn’t soften at all, and she also didn’t lower her weapon.

“I t-think I can help you guys-” Mabel raised her gun back up to point at the man’s face, and he put his hands up defensively. “-AH and th-that’s why I’m nervous! You guys are dangerous and I-I was afraid you wouldn’t believe me!”

Dipper snorted. “Great prediction, spot on. You really do know what happens in the future, huh?” Dipper didn’t understand why he would even come looking for them. If Blandin was this afraid of a couple of thirteen year old kids, he wasn’t going to be much help to anyone.

“But I swear I can help you! You have no reason to distrust me, look in my eyes- I’m not possessed, and why wouldn’t I try to help save the world from the apocalypse when I’m one of the unlucky people who live and work here!” Blandin looked sweaty and had wild eyes in his panic, but those eyes definitely weren’t Bill’s, at least.

“Look, I appreciate it,” Dipper started warily, and he glanced at Mabel, who was staring at the man with a neutral expression and her gun pointed at his nose. “I just… I don’t think you can help much? I don’t think you can help us kill any of these monsters, and I _know_ that you can’t just magically fix the hole in the sky.”

“You won’t help anyone going about it that way! You have to stop Bill Cipher… and I think I know how to,” Blandin spoke slowly, as though he was watching the twins’ reactions to make sure they weren’t about to blow his brains out and honestly… Dipper wasn’t entirely sure that Mabel _wasn’t_ considering it.

After a brief moment of silence, Mabel was the first to speak up. “You know how to permanently kill a demon?” She actually lowered the gun slightly.

Blandin sighed softly and shook his head. “No. I don’t know if anyone does eith-.”

“So then what could you possibly contribute?!” Mabel interrupted him, clearly exasperated.

The man just eyed the twins carefully before responding to her. “I think I know how we can… deter him. Scare him off, in a way. But…”

Dipper raised an eyebrow, “But what?”

“I’ll need your help to accomplish it… but I won’t be able to tell you anything about what exactly I’ll be doing. It could ruin your futures or the flow of time. Or both. So… you would have to trust me.”

Dipper didn’t get a chance to argue why that was a terrible idea, because Mabel dropped her weapon altogether and her carefully guarded expression slipped into one that looked both anxious and determined. “We’ll do it.”

 

\--------

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedback is always welcome. More to come soon.


	4. Bill

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shit starts to go down.
> 
> Please don't hate me too much.

Underneath the Mystery Shack, Stanford Pines’s lab was wrapped in silence, disturbed only by the light tinkling of metal tapping metal, and the soft rustling of sheets of paper. Although, the presence of the white noise transformed the tense atmosphere, making Sixer appear almost relaxed for once.

The man had hardly taken any time to eat or rest over the last few days- despite his niece’s daily lectures. In fact, a growing pile of bowls and plates sat on the floor near his desk from the times when she had _insisted_ on her great uncles getting some nutrition. He hadn’t spared even a few minutes to move them upstairs.

Hygiene also seemed to mean nothing to him, and Bill’s new sense of smell was disturbed by the fumes coming off of the human. Of course, Bill didn’t leave the lab for any period of time either, choosing to stay nearby to ensure that Ford wouldn’t add anything unexpected to his plans or find anything new in his research. Because of this, Bill found that the smell of his own body, while slightly more bearable due to his lack of stress-induced sweating, was still becoming more pungent. _Just another thing to add to my list of why humans are fucking disgusting and should be wiped out._

By now, Bill was disgusted by his familiarity with the limitations of the human body. He thought he knew a lot about the creatures from past experiences, but living as an old man drove home how fucking fragile they were. Even though it irritated the demon to no end to live in this shitty, poorly cared for corpse, his own pain gave him confidence. Since Stanford’s body was identical to the one he was in, Sixer’s work was surely suffering from the mistreatment of his physical form. The thought made him smug.

The quiet atmosphere remained throughout the day, even though Bill himself wasn’t a fan of the lack of chaotic sounds. The dream demon would much rather work in environments filled with his preferred human noises: screaming… sobbing… moans of pain. The way humans experienced sound was foreign to him, yet somehow the exotic sense made those shrieks and tears all the more satisfying. However, he knew that the lack of noise comforted his coworker, and he would much rather not start bickering with the grouchy human again.

He was convinced that Sixer could find anything to nag him about, and his most irritable sense seemed to be his hearing. When they were brought food, he complained about the sound of Bill chewing. When he wrote in his journals, he complained about Bill hovering too closely and _breathing_ too loudly. Even when Bill yawned or cracked his body’s old bones, it seemed to set the man on edge.

Ford’s frustrated outbursts had entertained the demon at first, but he found himself avoiding them instead of provoking them by this point. In any of Bill’s own forms, other creatures’ pain and negative feelings felt satisfying and almost downright _erotic._ A soul’s suffering made his whole being sing in a unique and ethereal way. So… it bizarre that, for some reason, sensing Sixer’s stress had been giving him a headache. Perhaps it was being in someone else’s body that was ruining it for him, or it could be a result from the perpetual flow of the same few souls spending an excessive amount of time being in much too close proximity. Regardless, he had no desire to enhance those waves of emotion.

The demon admittedly couldn’t pinpoint the exact origin of his former partner’s agitation, but he could infer that it was a mixture of anxiety and discomfort. Bill’s apocalypse was an obvious stressor for the man, and he could just _smell_ how desperately Fordsy wanted to be a hero. It was the force driving him to work incessantly.

Inconveniently for the demon _inside of the damn human_ , Sixer also felt weird working with his twin. Bill had been basing his portrayal of Stanley’s personality off of Stanford’s memories of the guy, and _boy_ did they have a fucked up past. He managed to pick the worst fleshbag to use! It was not only obnoxiously goddamn aged and broken down, it was likely the one person that nerdy scientist trusted the least.

Bill let a breath out, annoyed at how shaky it sounded. _Don’t get yourself so worked up, Cipher. You’re going to be out of this fucking corpse soon enough and back to your reign over this universe._

He smiled to himself and arched his back, wincing at the audible crack from his bones. He’d been kneeling for hours in front of the remnants of the structure that previously held the portal he’d built with the Pines man all those years ago. It amused him that Sixer’s great plan to take him down was entirely based around information that he would have never had without the demon.

Working on the same portal with the human brought up long forgotten memories, which gave him something to reflect on while he restructured the metal form. Bill couldn’t help but notice the parallels between the two projects. The first time, Ford had been blinded by his thirst for knowledge, his adoration for the demon, and his own ego. The demon had enhanced all of these, making his fascination turn into obsession.

When Bill first met him, his greatest desire had been to enhance his own intelligence and prove his worth. He wanted to change the world by exposing the supernatural and becoming famous among his kind in the process. After being labeled a freak and an outcast his entire life, the man strove to show everyone just how smart and important he was. They would admire and envy him! He would be a hero! It was all too easy to manipulate the man- all Bill had to do was stroke his ego.

_“I’ve seen the research you’ve conducted on the supernatural in this area, Sixer, and I’ve gotta say- your mind is noticeably superior to every person in your century. I’m here because I would love to give you the knowledge that your species is lacking. Cause you know, I can’t just teach the human race all the secrets of the universe, kid! They wouldn’t be able to understand it the way I know you can. Your work is already so advanced, I can only imagine how much you could alter the course of human history with my help! You could be the one to initiate the supernatural epoch of the human race! You’d finally get your kind to realize there are worlds beyond yours. Just imagine it!” Billed purred the words at him, letting his influence creep into the man’s mind and enhance his feelings of pride and excitement._

_“Y-you really think that I could bring about that much change in the world?” The human was severely blushing at the demon’s words, clearly happy with the praise. “I mean, I would be honored!” He added quickly. “I just don’t know if I could be the great mind you believe I am.”_

_Bill rolled his eye, “Don’t be modest, kid! I know you’ve always felt like you were special- like you were meant for something great! Well, I’m here to confirm that! I’ve seen what you’re capable of, and teaching you would be as worthwhile for me as it would for you. I just have a couple of conditions…”_

Convincing the scientist to allow the demon control of his body whenever he wished was pathetically easy. It progressed to the point where the man’s heart would race whenever Bill was near, and he would remain in an excited state throughout the periods of time after Bill had possessed him. The adoration and fascination the man regarded the demon with quickly melded into something much more emotionally-charged and, to Bill’s unending amusement, romantic. Honestly, Sixer must have been downright _starved_ for affection with the way he became infatuated with him. But whatever, it had worked for Bill’s plans, so he played into it.

Working on the portal now, Fordsy’s motivations seemed similarly based in his need to play the hero. He wanted to be the one to save the world, not anyone else. That was why he starved and exhausted his body. It may have even added to his treatment of Bill: he simply didn’t want his brother to be equally credited with the accomplishment, so he did his best to only let Bill work on the “easy” parts of the project, like recreating the metal triangle.

Having Bill work on the physical structure was enough for him, however, as he had successfully rebuilt it entirely by himself. He announced this to his coworker, standing up and stretching his stiff muscles. The satisfied look on Sixer’s face as he came to inspect the work made the demon grin.

He would have no way of knowing that Bill structured it in a way that would never allow it to hold the portal again, the materials being ruined and drained of their supernatural properties.

Stanford’s plan was thoroughly destroyed beyond repair.

Bill tried to hold back his excitement. It looked like he’d be getting out of this corpse before the day was over. He was just waiting until the kids were home… so that they could have their hearts ripped out as a family.

 

\--------

 

Dipper stayed close to his twin as they walked back to the Shack from the center of the town, the two of them hovering only a step or two behind Blendin Blandin. Mabel had insisted that the man remain in their direct vision as long as he was near them, not trusting him out of her sight. Dipper didn’t blame his sister’s caution, but she had been acting paranoid and cold since they had encountered the time agent, and it was so unlike her that it made him uneasy.

He glanced at his sister, but if she saw him looking at her, she didn’t show it. Her eyes were focused on the back of the man in front of them, and her mouth was set into a hard line. The expression on her face was so foreign that Dipper found himself doing a double take before turning back to stare in the direction they were heading.

For what seemed like the hundredth time this week, Dipper wished he could read her mind. Nothing was familiar to him anymore. He didn’t know how to talk to Mabel. He didn’t know how to solve any of his growing number of problems. He didn’t even know how the next hour of his life would play out. He couldn’t help but feel completely alone and lost, and he had to consciously push down the wave of resentment towards his twin that was suddenly suffocating him.

It didn’t matter if it wasn’t Mabel’s fault that he felt terrible, he always wound up more upset with her than anything else. Dipper knew she wasn’t isolating him on purpose, but that didn’t make him feel any better about it. What really fucked him up was that he and his sister had been through a lot of tough shit together, and he didn’t know how to get through hard times without her. He didn’t really _have_ anyone but her.

And recently, he didn’t even have himself to count on. He wasn’t safe in his own mind. If it wasn’t dreams ruining his mental state, it was intrusive thoughts about how his family and friends didn’t need him around. The whole thing was exhausting.

The boy shook his head lightly to clear his mind, willing the stress and anxiety to go away. Instead, he chose to focus on their current predicament with Blandin.

Mabel had shocked him when she agreed to work with the time agent on whatever mystery plan he’d come up with to stop Bill. He had tried to argue with his twin, but she stayed firm in her decision, claiming that they had no choice but to attempt whatever it was. She insisted that this may be their only chance to actually stop the dream demon and help save countless innocent people. Dipper gave up on arguing almost right away, figuring that if Mabel supported it, he would too.

Like he said, Blandin refused to give them any real details about the purpose of what they were doing. He told the kids that there was a point in the future which he believed would deter Bill… if they could get the demon to see it. As much as they pushed him, the man repeated that if he explained the nature of where he was taking the demon, it could alter their futures. They didn’t relent until he became exasperated and snapped at them, saying that telling either of them anything about it could alter the future to the point where what he needed to show Bill _wouldn’t exist._

Even though he felt like he might be jumping to conclusions, Dipper felt like that meant the two of them were directly involved in whatever it was that might deter the demon. _Maybe we hunt him down for revenge._ Dipper grinned to himself at the mental image of the adult-Mystery-Twins-turned-demon-hunters.

In the back of his mind, he wondered if guessing the future correctly would be enough to change it.

When the twins gave up on getting more information out of Blandin, they just asked him what he needed from them to accomplish it. Blandin explained that, since Bill has given himself a physical form in this universe, he would be able to move through this timeline with the man’s time agent watch. So basically, all they had to do was help him grab the demon, and he could do the rest.

On the surface, it sounded as though it would be simple enough to accomplish, but Dipper knew just how untrue that was. They had no idea how to get anywhere near Bill, especially since no one had seen him since he made that pyramid floating over the town.

As the Mystery Shack came into view, Dipper felt his muscles relax, and he shifted the weight of the sack of food he had slung over his shoulder. He may have no idea how to get to Bill, but they had decided to work on a plan once they got back to the Shack.

He just hoped they would be able to figure something out.

 

\--------

 

 _Ah, just in time._ Bill Cipher smirked to himself as he felt the presence of the twins nearing the Shack. They were accompanied by a third person, but he couldn’t care less about who it was. No one could ruin this moment for him. Everything he went through living in this sack of dusty bones was about to be worth it.

“Hey, Stanford, I’ll be right back.” Sixer looked up at him, confused by his obvious state of excitement. “I thought I heard the kids come in upstairs. I just want to get them down here, show them how close we are to completing this.” He grinned at the man, and saw his confusion turn to light amusement.

“They could probably use the reassurance.” He agreed. “Plus, I bet Dipper would be fascinated by the process of this. Yeah, go get them.”

_It’s finally time to get this party started._

Bill was downright giddy as he sprang up the stairs to the first floor of the Shack.

 

\--------

 

The twins had told Blandin to wait for them while they put away their new stashes of food in the kitchen. He sat down awkwardly on the couch as Mabel flashed him a quick, intense stare before leaving the room. Dipper gave him a half-hearted, sympathetic smile before turning to follow his sister.

Dipper had barely had the chance to set his sack of food down before Grunkle Stan burst into the room, breathing heavily and sporting an enormous grin. “Kids! My brother and I have something wonderful to show you down in the lab, come on!”

Stan turned back towards the gift shop, gesturing for them to follow. Mabel and Dipper exchanged a confused glance, but walked towards their cheerful grunkle without question. He moved at a swift pace back down to the lab, and Dipper felt a rush of adrenaline and excitement at his obviously happy demeanor. The boy found himself smiling, feeling hopeful for the first time since they had encountered the time agent earlier that night.

“Staaan-ford!” Grunkle Stan called out as the trio walked into the lab, surprising Dipper with how giddy the old man seemed. “Time to tell the kids the good news!”

Grunkle Ford stood up from his desk and walked over to his family, beaming at them. “Ah, there you are. I don’t know why Stan is quite this amped up, but we do have some good news for you. We’ve been recreating the portal that allowed Bill to tear a rift between the dimensions, and we may actually have the foundations of a solid plan to force the demons out of this universe.”

“Yep!” Stan grinned down at the twins, one of his eyes squinting slightly. “And guess what, kids? I built the entire physical structure of the portal myself!” Ford clapped his brother on the back, looking proud. Mabel and Dipper were brimming with excitement but couldn’t seem to get a word in.

“Guys, that’s ama-!” Stan shushed Dipper as soon as he started to speak. Dipper felt a twinge of sadness at the gesture, but figured his grunkle was just too impatient for whatever else he had to say, so he just smiled up at the man and waited for him to continue.

He wasn’t waiting long. “Fordsy here was working hard on the science-y nerdy bullshit aspects of the portal, but I managed to build this huge hunk of metal in just a day! Isn’t that amazing! And with these crusty, worthless, piece of shit bones and muscles too! It’s a fucking miracle, I’m telling you!”

Dipper felt his smile falter, and he tilted his head to look at his twin. Mabel still seemed caught up in his excited tone of voice and it seemed she didn’t notice what he had. Grunkle Stan never cursed in front of them on purpose. His gaze returned to his grunkle, who seemed to be rambling endlessly.

“I’ll tell you, kids, don’t grow old! I mean it, it’s like every single time you shift positions something hurts! Ain’t that right, Sixer?” Dipper glanced at Ford, whose eyes were wide and full of hurt. He didn’t respond.

“But no problem, right?! Kneeling over this hunk of metal all day wasn’t that bad, though! After all, pain _is_ hilarious.” Stan’s grin didn’t falter, but his eyes shifted over and locked onto Dipper’s.

 _No. No, no, no, no, no, no-!_ Dipper’s heart skipped a beat before racing wildly. He felt like he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t force himself to speak, but it didn’t matter, Stan just kept on ranting.

“ _So!_ I got this thing right back up to the original structure, right? But that isn’t even the best part! I actually managed to _distort or fucking remove_ every single supernatural property from the materials! I gotta say, it took a lot out of me, but I said to myself, ‘hey, anything for the family!’ Oh but wait-.” Stan held his hand up to Ford, who had opened his mouth to speak. Ford looked as confused as before, but now seemed angry on top of that.

Dipper was trying his hardest to breathe, but his throat felt closed up and his chest was clenched painfully. He reached down and grabbed his sister’s hand, though he was unable to look away from his great uncle.

“-there’s even more good news. Those materials would take waaaay more than your lifetimes to find again. Even you two, kids! That means everything about your plan has gone down the fucking drain! So I hope you’ve been able to start working on a new plan, Pine Tree, I know it must have been _so hard_ for you to be so useless to your family lately. Well, here’s your chance, kid! Your _family_ hasn’t accomplished any more than you have.”

The warm streaks on Dipper’s face were the only things that made him realize he was crying. He pulled himself closer to Mabel, who was shaking. _I’ve got to get her out of here. Fuck, fuck, why can’t I move? Oh fuck, this can’t be happening, please- please let this just be another nightmare._

“Grunkle Stan…” Mabel spoke up quietly, startling Dipper. He tensed up when Not-Stan’s eyes turned to her. His smile was twisted and horrifying at this point, and Dipper couldn’t help but cry harder.

“Oh, Stan! Thanks, Shooting Star, you reminded me! I have some more good news for ya!” Not-Stan’s eyes rolled back into his head, and when they slid back out they were heterochromatic. One eye remained Stan’s dark chestnut and the other was a sickening gold.

His maniacal expression slipped back to sheer joy for an instant before he spoke up again. “I got rid of him for you! He won’t be around to bother any of us anymore! Isn’t that wonderful? Pine Tree, no more Man of Mystery emasculating you! Sixer, no more annoying, idiotic brother ruining your work!”

When Stan’s body started to glow a bright yellow, all of the Pines backed away from the man. Dipper sunk to the floor once he felt his back touch the wall, sobbing. He tried to pull Mabel down with him, to hold her, shield her as much as he could. He couldn’t save her, but maybe he could make it hurt less.

Mabel pulled away from him, however, and he looked at her face, feeling hurt and confused. _Does she really think she can run away?_

She had tears and snot streaming down her face, but she looked down at her twin with an urgent and frantic expression before tilting her head towards the stairs. _Oh. She does think she can run._ He shook his head sadly at her, but she grabbed his face in her hands and mouthed a single word at him: Blandin.

The realization hit him at the same moment she turned and ran towards the stairs. Dipper stood up and ran towards the glowing Stan just as he crumpled to the floor, and the glowing was coming from the air above his fallen body. Dipper fell to his knees at his grunkle’s side and started shaking him, begging him to wake up. The boy was shocked when he noticed that Stan’s body was cold and stiff, as though he had been dead for days. He knew he was yelling. He hoped it had Bill’s attention.

“Now, now, Pine Tree. If you’re going to look so terrified, I want to see it.” A black hand grabbed Dipper’s chin and pulled his face up. His eyes widened in horror when he saw the smug looking Bill Cipher staring back at him. “Damn, kid. Fear is a good look on you.”

Dipper ripped away from the demon’s grasp and stumbled backwards, pulling Stan’s body with him. The triangle didn’t get a chance to pursue him before he was shot at by something on his left. The boy turned to see his Grunkle Ford holding a similar weapon to the one he’d fired at Bill before being turned to gold. He knew it was childish, but he put all of his faith into his great uncle at that moment.

Bill turned towards the man, but didn’t move any closer to him. “Get out of here, Bill,” Ford said, his face set confidently. “I won’t let you take away another member of this family.”

The demon laughed harshly, the sound vibrating the walls of the lab and making Dipper’s head hurt. “ _Family?!_ C’mon Fordsy you can’t be serious! I bet if I killed these kids but spared you, you would just go on living like you always have! Just like you would after losing your idiot brother!” Bill started to approach the man now, growing the slightest bit larger with every movement. “Besides! He died trying to protect his family, is that what you want? Huh, big guy? Do you need to be the hero that badly? Yeah, right! I bet if I offered you to rule at my side you would jump at the chance, and you’d never think about these shitty kids again! Family is a burden, right, Sixer?”

Ford’s hands shook but he didn’t lower his weapon. He continued to glare firmly at the demon, but didn’t get the chance to speak before Bill was violently yanked down a few inches.

Bill turned to snarl at whatever had grabbed a hold of him, but was interrupted by a blinding flash of light as Blendin pulled both himself and the demon into the temporary rip he made in time.

When the light faded, Dipper, Mabel and Ford were alone. Stan’s body was still lying on the floor in front of Dipper.

They didn’t know what would happen now, or how long it would take for them to determine the success or failure of the time agent’s plan… but Dipper couldn’t find it in himself to care at that moment. He just wrapped his arms around the ice-cold body of his great uncle, and let himself be carried away by his grief.

\--------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's a cliffhanger but I really wanted it to end here. I'll be working on chapter 5 pretty quickly but yeah. Enjoy and I am so sorry


	5. Dipper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The events of Blendin Blandin's plans fall into place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to say how sorry I am for taking 12 days (nearly two weeks omg) to update this.
> 
> To be honest, my only excuse is that I knew this would be a rough chapter to write, and I have been in a much too happy state of mind to want to torment my children this way. I will say that this chapter is noticeably longer than the "standard" chapter I post. (And it damn well better be enjoyable because it took me about 10 or 11 hours sheesh.)
> 
> That being said, I'd like to leave a gentle warning that this chapter may be more... ahem... bloody and painful than the norm.

_Cold. Too… cold._

Stanford Pines had seen his fair share of horrible things in his life. He had felt _more_ than his fair share of pain. He had seen death, suffered loneliness, and even been certain that he would never manage to get through the next few moments of his life on more than one occasion.

None of the desperation and hopelessness that Ford had felt throughout his life came close to what he felt now, frozen in place while his great niece and nephew clutched at and cried on the form sitting a few inches from him.

It was touching the body on the floor that made realization drive its harsh claws through his heart. This wasn’t a fresh corpse, not a recent death.

Stanley Pines had been dead for days.

Slowly, agonizingly, Ford’s frozen mind, body, and heart began to thaw. Tiny fragments began to collect themselves in his memory. Nearly unnoticeable slip-ups became grave errors. Ghosts of recognition that had been previously forgotten or ignored played before his eyes like a film. Flashes of eyes, hands, grinning teeth, a voice, a laugh… Images went from hazy and unimportant to vivid, devastating. Much too late, Ford knew the exact moment his brother changed… and the last time he saw his twin alive.

Maybe he was still in shock, but he doubted it. Ford slipped out of his confusion and denial immediately after his mind registered what the icy feel of his brother’s skin truly meant. He could hear and see the children, who were hysterically sobbing within arm’s reach of him. But he could not join them. Ford had no tears to express his anguish, no rage to express his hatred of Bill Cipher, no fear of the demon’s return.

All that the man could focus on was the certainty of losing the only living soul who had ever given him real love, and he had not once acknowledged or returned that love since they were kids. He had started to when he finally swallowed his grudges and his pride by thanking his brother for saving his life… but no, that had fallen on deaf ears. Stan was already gone by then. He had failed his twin. His other half.

_No one can live as half of a person._

 

_\--------_

 

Dipper Pines only managed to pull himself away from his great uncle’s body when his twin yanked him almost aggressively into an embrace. He laid his head on her shoulder, the tears still falling and now dampening her shirt. He couldn’t look at her. He couldn’t see the pain mirrored in her eyes- their eyes. If he looked at Mabel, he would have to deal with his shifting thoughts.

He couldn’t imagine Ford’s pain, and he didn’t want to. Having been faced with the fleeting realization that he and his twin were going to die when Bill had been in front of them, he had collapsed in on himself. Any tension or isolation he felt from his twin was gone, and he was left with nothing but the crippling fear of a world without Mabel Pines.

Somehow, now, he wasn’t running. Why wasn’t he running? Why wasn’t he forcing her up the stairs and as far away from the Mystery Shack as their legs would carry them? Maybe he couldn’t leave Stan’s body. Maybe he was broken. Maybe he had come to terms with the fact that running was futile.

Maybe some part of his eternally curious and convoluted mind just wanted to see Bill’s return.

Because he had _no doubt_ that Bill would return. Blendin had never claimed he would trap the demon in another point in time, and Dipper was done underestimating Bill’s power. Oh, that monster would be back, and he would be _pissed._

Everything inside of him seized up when he imagined the demon. He had no delusions that the time agent’s plan would stop the demon’s apocalypse, but even on the off chance that it succeeded… why would he leave the Pines family alive? Sure, _maybe_ Bill would leave and decide not to destroy or rule their universe, but why would he spare the humans who thwarted him?

They had caused him too much trouble… they were doomed.

 

After what seemed like hours, but couldn’t have been more than mere minutes, someone finally spoke. The voice was harsh- cut up with moisture and a jumbled mixture of emotions. Dipper almost didn’t recognize it, his ears were ringing and his head was pulsating.

“Okay… w-we don’t know if,” the speaker seemed to fumble over their words, “…Bill,” they paused, pulling in a severe and shaky breath before continuing, “If- if he’s coming back. It’s safe to assume he is, so we need to do _something._ We shouldn’t leave ourselves defenseless. Grunkle Ford, do you have anything down here that we can use?”

Dipper allowed his twin to pull away from him, and simply stared as she walked over to their great uncle and placed her hand gently on his back. The man didn’t even flinch from the contact. He was still kneeling in front of his twin, and his eyes were blank and lifeless. It made Dipper’s heart ache with renewed pain.

Ford leaned back on his ankles before rising to his feet, letting out an almost inaudible sigh. It was obvious to Dipper that he was having a difficult time pulling his gaze away from Stan’s body, but his eyes fell on Mabel nonetheless. “Yes. I…,” he cleared his throat, “I should have some stuff that might… might help.” He cast one last broken glance towards the man on the floor before turning away.

Swallowing and rubbing his eyes with the backs of his hands, Dipper rose to follow his great uncle and his sister. He hovered behind Ford when the man’s movement halted, and his eyes flickered up to some rows of dusty, black shelves that sat in front of the trio. The ledges were built into the actual structure of the lab, and they seemed deep, falling back maybe three feet into the walls. They spanned from the floor to the ceiling, and Dipper could roughly estimate that there were about twenty-five or thirty spaces total. Out of these, only five or so appeared empty, although he had no doubt that the contents of some were simply pushed too far back for him to see.

Ford pulled a few faded cardboard boxes down from various shelves and placed them on the floor, disturbing dust that had settled on the unused materials in the process. Without a word to the kids, he began to rifle through the contents of one of the boxes before sighing again and placing it back on a high shelf. He leaned over another, similar looking box and pulled open the folded flaps that had kept it closed.

The ghost of what was almost a grin danced over Ford’s face after just glancing into the container. He gestured to the twins to come closer. Dipper peered into the box and noticed that it contained a few other rectangular forms- made of something metallic rather than cardboard.

“These are probably our best bet for when Cipher returns. I don’t want to tell you that anything in these cases will stop or kill him… but they can definitely slow him down if we can catch him off guard. It’s been,” Ford shakes his arm to shift his jacket off of his wrist, and glances at his watch. “Okay. It’s been nearly ten minutes since… God I don’t even know _what happened_!” The man glanced at his great niece and nephew, confusion and panic written all over his face. “Although… I guess we don’t have time to talk about it. If we get the chance later, maybe…,” his gaze slid down to the floor, eyes glazing over again.

He shook his head to pull himself together and began taking out the contents of the boxes in front of him. “Bill left about ten minutes ago. I can’t imagine we have much time before he returns. I say our best bet is to try and ambush him when he comes back- slow him down enough for us to have a decent window of time to get away.”

None of them spoke again after that. The twins accepted the weapons given to them by their great uncle and they moved back towards his twin’s corpse. The trio formed themselves in almost a triangle around the body, with a few feet between them and where Bill had disappeared into the portal. Their backs pressed against their respective walls, they kept their weapons trained on that point.

The crouching position that Dipper set himself in made his back ache, but he felt poised like a coiled snake, feeling _almost_ ready to take on the demon that would surely come to kill them all.

He kept his eyes off of his family members… he couldn’t afford to break down again.

 

\--------

 

To Dipper, the minutes of waiting for Bill to return felt like an eternity. He thought that the anxiety and fear would surely suffocate him- that his own panic would end his life before Bill even got the opportunity. The worst part of it was knowing that dying of a heart attack would spare him from whatever horrifying torture the demon thought fitting. He tried not to wish for it.

Standing there, it was impossible to imagine a life after those moments. He could not envision ever shifting out of his carefully placed stance. He felt that his arms would stay trained on the center of the room- one bent and pulled against his torso, one outstretched and balancing the weapon- for the rest of his existence.

When a blinding, silvery-blue light flashed into his vision, only a couple of feet away from the tip of his weapon, Dipper found himself wishing that his thoughts had been true.

He would happily stand there for the rest of his life if it would save him and his family from Bill Cipher.

The first thing to come through the portal was human, without a doubt, and Dipper felt a split second of something akin to relief before he realized what had fallen on the floor. It was half of an arm, cleanly torn off at the elbow. Despite his pre-existing state of terror, the boy could feel his heart clench noticeably tighter when he saw a familiar white strap around the wrist: Blandin’s time watch.

Processing the situation unfurling in front of his eyes took an instant, however the feeling that time was only crawling along seemed drastically amplified from before. He didn’t get a chance to react before something followed the severed limb through the portal, landing harshly on the time watch. A deafening _crunch_ filled the space which was otherwise void of sound. Emerging from the portal was Dipper’s nightmares in the flesh. _Bill._

The triangular demon’s usual yellow glow was covered in a thick layer of bloody viscera, with only his single eye uncovered- the white standing in stark contrast to the horrible red. As the demon floated from the closing portal, the gore on his form dripped and slid off onto the floor of the lab, leaving a monstrous trail in his wake. The viscera having fallen off of him, Dipper saw that Bill’s form remained entirely red, and he didn’t know if it was from rage or blood. He assumed it was both.

On his right, Dipper could see his great uncle frantically pulling the trigger of his supernatural gun, though the shots never hit their target. The flaming orbs that had flown from Ford’s gun froze, mere inches from the demon’s form, before sizzling out and falling to the floor. Bill halted now, no longer drifting closer to the man. With a wave of his hand, the demon ripped the weapon from Ford’s grasp. The gun hovered in the air, disassembling itself piece by piece and crumbling to dust. Bill’s red form flashed with bloody light once, and Dipper stared helplessly as his great uncle flew upwards, screaming.

In an instant, a thundering _crack_ reverberated throughout the lab. Ford was no longer yelling. The man’s body dropped unceremoniously to the floor, and the form’s movements ceased entirely.

Dipper would never forget that sound as long as he lived.

Bill was still focused on Ford’s limp body. He was speaking, but Dipper couldn’t understand the words. They didn’t matter. While Bill’s attention was still held by his great uncle, something clicked in Dipper’s mind. He jerked his head away from the demon and locked eyes with his twin.

_Run, Mabel._

Realization shone through the tears in her eyes, and her gaze flickered to the stairs. Her muscles tensed up to bolt away, but Bill, of course, was faster.

“Oh, _Shooting Star_ ,” the demon’s otherworldly voice echoed, making the hairs on Dipper’s body stand up. He didn’t turn away from the body at his feet, even as he addressed the girl behind him. “Don’t you know yet that I can **_hear your thoughts?_** ”

Dipper could feel hot tears streaming down his cheeks. “ ** _If you want to get away from me so badly, be my guest!_** ” Bill remained in place, unmoving, as Mabel’s body fell to the floor and went flying up the stairs, legs first, as though something was dragging her. Her shrieks stopped at the same moment that Dipper heard a distant, but loud thud.

“No, no, no, no, no- _Mabel, no!”_ The boy didn’t think- he didn’t hesitate. He broke into a full-on sprint towards the stairs, driven by the overwhelming fear of losing his sister.

He was surprised to find that he actually succeeded in climbing a few steps before he was knocked down. Though he began letting out a high-pitched scream as he fell, his rib cage collided with the step he had been standing on, essentially ripping the air from his lungs and cutting off the sound.

“ ** _You._** ” Bill yanked the boy towards him without so much as touching him. Dipper became completely still, lying on his back on the ground in front of the maroon demon. His eyes were wide and panicked at the sight of the monster staring down at him. Trying to pull in air only resulted in a fit of harsh coughing.

The demon’s black arms grew ten times their usual size, fingers elongating into sharpened black claws as he drew nearer to the boy in his gaze. Recognition washed over him when he saw those talons, threatening to make his heart give out. _He’s been in my dreams for days._

“ ** _Right you are, kiddo! Took you long enough, sheesh. If I were up against someone a little more intelligent, I would have been found out before I ever got to my big REVEAL! Good thing you’re my biggest threat, huh?_** ” Bill’s tone took on a sickeningly sweet note for that brief moment, before his eye widened and his red glow began to pulsate. The anger returned instantly, and the talons reached down and dug into Dipper’s arms, effectively pinning him to the floor. The claws completely punctured through his flesh, and the new holes in his upper arms made him scream in agony.

“ ** _I don’t know what the fuck you did back there, Pine Tree, but I’m not stupid._** ” He snarled, his voice dripping with hatred. “ ** _I’m not going to let some idiot kid trick me. Or trap me. Whatever the fuck that was!_** ” Dipper whimpered out of pain and terror. He just hoped that Bill would kill him quickly.

Laughter echoed throughout the lab, though there was no genuine humor in it. “ ** _Kill you? Boy, would that be a relief! Solves all of my problems in just one snap- of your neck! Unfortunately for both of us, LIFE JUST ISN’T THAT EASY! Your pathetic uncle made sure to make this hard on me! Which means I guess I’ll just have to make it that much harder on YOU._** ”

Bill’s eye widened and Dipper responded by squeezing his tight. He didn’t want to know what the demon would do to him, and he shuddered at the images his mind conjured up- likely thanks to Bill. He clenched his jaw and tightened his muscles in a desperate hope to prepare himself for whatever pain he was to endure.

The searing pain in his right leg forced a gasp out of him, and his eyes shot open. Halfway through his thigh was a red beam of light, which quickly passed entirely through the limb. No pain that Dipper had ever experienced in his life compared to this, and he couldn’t even force out a scream.

“ ** _There ya go! I even cauterized it so you won’t bleed out! It’s the least I can do, UNFORTUNATELY._** ” The ringing in the boy’s ears was almost enough to block out the demon, but, of course, Bill projected his words directly into Dipper’s thoughts. Black dots speckled his vision, and he could feel his body relaxing, ready to slip into unconsciousness.

The last things that Dipper saw and heard were Bill. The demon floated frantically around where the boy was lying on the ground, and appeared to be speaking to himself. “Not worth it, not worth it, _fuck!_ It’s fake but _fuck, fuck, **fuck-**_ it’s not worth it!” Dipper assumed it was a result of his pain-riddled, half-conscious state… but he could swear he saw the demon shudder violently.

The air around the demon parted, revealing something that Dipper’s mind could only interpret as _void_ , and then it swallowed Bill Cipher. The last image Dipper saw was the empty space where the demon had hovered, before shock and pain dragged him out of consciousness.

 

\--------

 

“Aw c’mon, dude. I’m sure Melody is a tough cookie, she can handle herself,” Wendy playfully elbowed Soos in the side, casting a grin at him. The man seemed incredibly stressed over his girlfriend. Wendy guessed she’d be the same if she couldn’t get into contact with someone she cared about in all this mess. Luckily for her, her family was comprised entirely of badass people who could hold their own.

Soos smiled gratefully at her reassurances, even though he didn’t seem too convinced by them. He opened his mouth to respond, but snapped it shut again at the sound of someone yelling nearby.

_Wait… are they cheering?_

Wendy looked towards the sound as, as she thought, there were a few people standing out in the open shouting and pumping their fists in the air. Her gaze followed their line of sight, and she immediately started whooping alongside them. That godforsaken tear in the sky was folding in on itself rapidly, and she grinned wildly as it closed entirely before her eyes.

She and Soos exchanged ecstatic smiles. They didn’t know how it happened, and Wendy couldn’t care less what the cause was. When she caught sight of a couple of demons shrieking and frantically fleeing the area, she laughed with more enthusiasm than she had in what felt like years. Her laughter just kept building in volume and cheeriness when she saw what the monsters were fleeing towards- the crumbling and collapsing pyramid that they had created in the sky above Gravity Falls.

The redhead gasped and grabbed Soos’s arm excitedly, pulling him along with her as she broke into a light jog away from the town square. “The Pines! Oh, man, we’ve gotta go tell them! Shit, do you think they could have done something to cause this?!”

Soos practically skipped alongside her, not needing her push to want to head towards the Mystery Shack. He shook his head in amusement and laughed. “I wouldn’t put it past them, dude.”

She smiled the whole walk, joking and laughing with Soos the entire way there. Her heart hadn’t felt this light in forever.

 

\--------

 

Wendy slammed the front door to the Mystery Shack open with pure glee, taking a couple of steps inside and sucking in a huge breath to yell the exciting news to her friends. In the brief moment of silence following her stepping inside, she heard the distinct and obvious sound of crying coming from somewhere in the Shack’s gift shop. She froze in place- the breath she had pulled in caught in her throat. It was a girl crying.

The girl glanced at an equally-concerned looking Soos before bolting towards the gift shop. “Mabel? Mabel!” she called into the otherwise silent house. She slid to a stop when she turned the corner and saw the vending machine door open, with Mabel lying only a couple of feet away from the entrance. Her chestnut hair was splayed across the lap of a girl who was sobbing uncontrollably, too caught up in her grief to even spare a look at who had entered the room.

Shoving down her shock at realizing that the girl was Pacifica Northwest of all people, Wendy kneeled beside the two girls and reached towards Mabel’s cheek. Pacifica finally looked at her then, as she violently pulled the girl in her lap away from the redhead’s touch. Wendy didn’t know how to react, so she just made some calming “ _shh_ ” sounds and sat down on the floor near the other girls.

“Hey, hey, relax. What happened here?” Wendy ran her eyes over the girl’s form and noticed that though she was mostly motionless, her chest was rising and falling. It only relieved her so much. “Where is Mr. Pines and his brother? Where’s Dipper?”

Pacifica sobbed even harder at that, and leaned her head down so that her forehead touched Mabel’s. “I-I d-d-don’t know,” the blonde sucked in a gasping breath. “She won’t wake up, oh god why won’t she wake up?” Watery blue eyes met Wendy’s searching look, and she knew the blonde was in a complete state of shock.

“Soos, can you go get some blankets?” He nodded but she didn’t see it, choosing to keep her eyes on the girls. “Pacifica, I need you to tell me everything you know.”

The kid seemed absolutely devastated, and Wendy tried to keep both of them calm. Pacifica nodded gently, and then started to recount everything she had seen that day.

 

\--------

 

Tickling, slap. Tickling, slap.

“Mmph,” Mabel groaned and twitched her feet, trying to get the weird feelings off of them.

A voice spoke, coming from somewhere above her. It was much too loud and made her head throb impossibly harder. She groaned again and buried her face in the warm, soft surface below her.

“It’s working! Ohmigosh I think _she waking up!_ ” Hands roughly pushed her shoulder, forcing her to face upwards again. The hands were shaking her now, the voice was calling her name.

Mabel’s eyes fluttered open, and she squinted at the hard light that assaulted her senses. Her head was pulsing and her heart started beating rapidly. She was overwhelmed by a feeling of confusion and panic, and she pushed herself up in one motion, swaying and shaking softly.

 _Bad idea, bad idea, ow._ Mabel thought to herself, clutching her head at the increased pressure of her headache. She was practically shoved to the ground again when someone tackled her. It took a moment for her to process that it was a hug.

She took in her surroundings. Pacifica Northwest had her arms wrapped around the girl, and she seemed to be shaking with violent sobs and whimpers. Wendy was sitting on her knees a couple of feet away from her, and Soos was standing nearby with a blanket and a steaming mug in his hands.

“Wendy, wha-?” Mabel’s eyes widened with horror and she pulled away from the blonde and started screeching, trying to get coherent words out.

The redhead walked over to Soos and took the blanket out of his hands. She shifted to Mabel and wrapped the blanket around her shoulders, kneeling in front of the hysterical girl and trying to soothe her.

“Mabes, hey. It’s okay, you’re safe with us,” Wendy took the girl’s face in her hands and lightly ran her thumbs over the girl’s cheeks. Mabel tried to focus on the gentle touches and understand the situation she was in. Only once Mabel stopped hyperventilating did she try to get her to speak again. “Hey… don’t panic. You were unconscious, it’s normal for you to be shocked but just try to relax and center yourself, okay dude?” Mabel nodded, appreciating the soothing tone. “Do you know what knocked you out, kiddo?”

Despite the fact that her pulse had finally started to even out, she could feel her heart skip a beat at the question. A wave of nausea rolled over her stomach, and she turned away, sputtering and coughing as she emptied its contents on the floor beside where she sat. It was comprised of mainly stomach acid, with small bits of undistinguishable remnants of her meal the night before strewn throughout the puddle. Even after the vomit stopped coming, she stayed bent over as her body dry heaved, desperately trying to throw up more. The sight and smell made her jerk back once her stomach settled some, and she scooted a few feet away from the mess before looking again at the people surrounding her.

Soos walked over to where she now sat, and handed her the cup he held. It was no longer steaming, but she gratefully accepted the offer. She enjoyed the warm tea, which diluted the acidic burn in her throat and the putrid flavor on her tongue. Soos gave her a gentle smile before walking out of the gift shop and returning with a damp towel to wipe up the sickness on the floor.

Wendy looked concerned, and Pacifica looked horrified. Mabel had a hard time looking either of them in the eye as she nodded- almost unnoticeably- as tears sprung up and threatened to fall down her cheeks.

“Bill.” Mabel’s voice sounded harsh and broken, and it came out as almost a whimper. She flinched at how strange the tone sounded coming from her lips. It was a ghost of her usually cheerful and bright voice. Wendy’s face hardened and Pacifica’s was washed over with fresh streams of tears.

Mabel’s lip quivered, and she allowed the liquid in her eyes to fall over her lower lids, though she chose to stare at the remaining tea in her mug while she cried. When Wendy spoke again, something inside of the girl snapped, and she felt sick again.

“What ha-?” The redhead’s words cut off when Mabel jolted upright and slammed the tea on the floor, rising to her feet and shedding the blanket from her once again shaking form. **_Dipper._**

“ _Dipper!_ ” she repeated out loud, bolting to the still open vending machine door and half-running, half-stumbling down the stairs into the lab. There was a split second of surprised hesitation before the others were following after her.

She jerked to a halt when she reached the bottom of the stairs, eyes flitting over the lab before she saw her twin. He was lying almost in the dead center of the room, and she fumbled over her own feet as she moved towards him, trying to see straight through the tears clouding her vision.

_Please be alive, please be alive, pleasebealivepleasepleaseplea-!_

Falling down beside her brother, Mabel could feel her the skin on her knees scraping the ground and getting cut up. She violently rubbed the liquid from her eyes, gazing down at him. Dipper was laying on his back, his eyes closed, unmoving. Blood, now more dark brown than red in color, pooled around and over his upper arms. She could see a number of puncture wounds through them, his blood having formed flaky, crude scabs over them.

Mabel brushed his hair off of his forehead, revealing his constellation birth mark. She blinked more tears away and slid her gaze over him again. It was hard to pull her eyes off of his arms, but she glanced down his torso and le-.

 _His leg. Oh my G- HIS LEG._ She choked back a sob and allowed her eyes to water freely. As lightly as she could manage, she brushed the tips of her fingers down his right thigh, stopping before she touched the wound. “ _Wendy!_ ” she yelled it, but the sound came out as a broken, shrill whine.

Without bothering to look up as the teen approached them, Mabel turned and buried her face into Wendy’s legs, sobbing and hyperventilating. She heard a painful sounding gasp above her, and she shuddered. If Wendy was shocked too, it must really be bad. _You know it’s bad, you idiot._ She scolded herself. _His leg is just GONE._

“Help him. Wendy, please, please, help… help him.” Mabel pulled away from the girl as she bent to sit down beside her. She didn’t look at her twin again- she couldn’t- but she buried her head on her brother’s torso. Her breathing was in sync with the rising and falling of his chest. Some part of her acknowledged that that meant he was breathing and impossibly _alive_ , but it did nothing to stop her panic attack. The girl just kept rambling, not even hearing herself anymore, begging her friend to save the other half of her soul. Insisting that she couldn’t live in a world without Dipper Pines.

“Soos! I’m going to need you to do your best to carry Mr. Pines and his brother upstairs. I can help in a minute but… Mabel and I are going to carry Dipper. He’s still breathing, but he’s in really bad shape. Pacifica. I need you to calm down, breathe, and try to find any and all medical supplies in this house. Even if you think it won’t help, just bring it, okay?” Mabel could hear someone running back up the stairs then, but the weight in her chest kept her pinned to her brother.

Someone walked closer to them, then. She barely heard Soos’s soft whispering. The conversation that followed was quiet enough for Mabel to assume the words were not meant to be heard by her.

“Wendy… Stan didn’t make it,” Soos’s voice wavered at the words, and there was a pause and a sharp intake of air from Wendy before he continued. “His brother is knocked out, there’s blood on his scalp so I think he’s probably got a wicked concussion. Should… should I still bring Stan upstairs? I don’t want to make Mabel even worse off, but I don’t know if it’d be better to leave him or for her to have to see that…”

Mabel’s voice broke when she tried to speak, but she steadied her breathing enough to force the words out. “I-I already know about Grunkle Stan. Just… please help my brother and Grunkle Ford. Please.” She pulled herself away from Dipper with some hesitation, turning away from the sight of his injuries to try and keep herself from breaking down again. Wendy and Soos both had tear tracks running down their faces, but Soos gave her a solemn nod before turning to try and move Ford up the stairs.

Sighing faintly, Wendy took a step back towards Dipper and tilted her head at Mabel. “C’mon, girl. Let’s get him out of here.”

 

\--------

 

Dipper groaned with exhaustion and tried to shift his position to curl up on his side, but hissed in pain at the movement. He was hardly beginning to wake up, yet still found himself already trying to force himself back to sleep. It had been so blissful for once, no nightmares, not even any normal dreams. Just a solid state of black rest for his weary mind.

Behind his eyelids, he could tell that it was morning- or daytime. _Yikes, how late did I sleep in? Ugh, Grunkle Stan is going to kill me if I’m late for my shift. Maybe if I just stay here all day I can avoid his wrath._ The thought made him smile, but he repressed a sigh as he decided it really would be a bad idea to piss his great uncle off by skipping work. He resigned himself to his fate of manning the cash register and restocking overpriced knick-knacks all day… but he would get a few more minutes in this warm bed before he willingly walked down to the gift shop.

He started drifting off again, letting his thoughts fade away as he nuzzled further into the soft blankets. Maybe it was just his exhaustion speaking, but his bed felt infinitely more comfortable than usual. He twitched his nose in irritation when his upper arm started itching, and he lazily rubbed his nails over the source of the feeling. When his fingertips grazed over rough fabric instead of skin, he finally chose to open his eyes, curious about the strange material coating his arm.

His heart skipped a beat when he saw a gauze wrapping covering the itchy spot on his arm. The white bandages were tinted a reddish pink in a few areas, including the area which he was dying to scratch. Confusion melted into realization, realization melted into sheer panic, and panic made him bolt upright.

For the first time, he took in his surroundings. This was not his bed, this was not his and Mabel’s room… and… he wasn’t even in the Mystery Shack. His heart thudded with a concerning pressure in his chest, as though it would burst any minute. He looked over his arm again, and then glanced at the other, finding it covered in eerily similar wrappings and sporting matching bloody patches.

 _What in the- oh._ Tears sprung in Dipper’s eyes and he could practically feel his insides growing cold. Flashes of memory invaded his mind, even as he tried to push them down and keep them at bay.

_Stan…_

_Bill._

_The portal…_

_Bill._

_Ford…_

**_Bill._ **

_Mabel- Oh my god, Mabel._

Those claws from his nightmares… and then- black.

 _And now I’m here, wherever the fuck here is._ He winced in pain as he used his arms to push himself up, swinging his legs under the sheets to the edge of the bed. Despite having no idea what brought him to this room, he was driven by the need to find his twin. He was desperate at this point. _Who cares if I lived? It means nothing if Mabel didn’t._

Dipper slid off of the bed and stood up. Or… he tried to stand up. The ground rose up to meet him as he collapsed to the floor, too caught off guard to catch himself, though he tried in vain to grasp the covering on the bed to steady him. _Maybe my legs are asleep?_

He looked down at his legs, then… and boy was that a mistake. Shock coursed through him in waves as he stretched his arm down to touch the bandages at the bottom of his right leg- or, what remained of his leg. By now, he was shaking violently, sobs wracking his entire body. From about halfway through his right thigh and down, his leg was completely gone.

Cruelly enough, Dipper couldn’t even pull his legs in to bury his face in his knees as he cried. Everything felt alien and uncomfortable. Nothing about his surroundings even felt real to him anymore. He couldn’t form a coherent thought, he was incapable of thinking or feeling outside of the shock and hopelessness that enveloped his entire body.

Wrapping his arms around his torso while rocking in place didn’t give him any comfort. Without even having the satisfaction of folding in on himself, he let his horror consume him. He stayed in this unfocused state for a while. Lacking the ability to deal with his grief piece by piece, the boy had to wait while his mind threw every detail of his suffering at him simultaneously.

After some time, he managed to put a solid, coherent thought together. It would have been an accomplishment, if not for the fact that his moment of clarity only brought on a whole new sickening level of anguish.

_I can still feel it… like it’s still there._

Still trapped in the flood that came crashing down after that realization, his mind decided to remind him why he had tried to stand in the first place. He knew that he had no hope of finding Mabel if he couldn’t move, and he had to quickly shoot down the part of him that suggested he may be able to stumble around until he figured out where he was, and where his twin was. Dipper knew that it appeared he was in a safe space, but he couldn’t be too careful- especially in his state.

_What if I just yell until someone comes?_

The thought barely had time to register before he started. He yelled for his sister, he yelled for Wendy, he yelled for Ford, and every other person he trusted that he could think of. He didn’t stop when his voice became hoarse, and he screamed with more vigor when he started to cry again.

By the time someone came to his room, his throat was torn up and his speech was almost lost. He only stopped yelling when the door slammed open, and the sound rang throughout his skull and only worsened his headache. Slumping in relief that his calls were heard, he slid his eyes over to the door and visibly relaxed when he saw a familiar redhead staring at him with huge, fearful eyes.

“Wendy,” he rasped out, the sound almost a whisper at this point. She moved towards him, but was nudged out of the way by a noticeably grief-stricken Mabel. His sister fell to her knees in the space where his leg should have been, and dragged him into a hug that was so tight it almost hurt.

“Mabes… oh my God, you’re okay,” His voice was on the verge of being entirely inaudible, but the words were meant more for him than for her. “Where are we? What happened? Is Ford…?”

His twin sniffled, pulling back hesitantly to look into the eyes that mirrored her own. “We’re at the Northwest Manor. Pacifica’s parents are… gone, but she opened her house to anyone who needed shelter.” That surprised him, but it explained the room he was in. “Bill’s gone, Dip. I guess… I guess we must have done something ri- _Blendin_ must have done something right.” Her face darkened with the correction, and Dipper hoped she didn’t feel responsible for his death. “Grunkle Ford is in another room down the hall, he’s going to be okay.”

The relief that he felt at her words was tangible. He could feel the weight he had carried over the past couple of weeks lift beautifully from his shoulders. It almost made him feel content again… but he had a challenging time embracing any true peace of mind with the knowledge of everything they had lost. Absentmindedly, he glanced down at his missing leg again, still expecting to feel the weight of Mabel sitting on it.

“I’m so sorry, Dipdop.” He looked back up at his twin, and his tension came back when he saw the pain in those watery orbs. She looked like she had so much more that she wanted to say, but she held it back.

“It’s okay as long as you’re here,” Dipper gave her a sorrowful smile. He almost meant it.

 

\--------

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yikes.
> 
> Leave some feedback, I love that stuff and it drives me on in writing this monster fic. I promise that chapter 6 will be coming much sooner than is probably good for my health... and my heart.
> 
> Next chapter is gonna be... bittersweet. It won't be the nearly 100 percent torment that this one is, and it'll definitely have more smile-worthy content.
> 
> Final couple of notes! Firstly, the next chapter will be post-time skip. That's right! Chapter 6 will be set ten years in the future.   
> And of course... for my fellow sinners... the next chapter will finally kick off the BILLDIP/CIPHERPINES/DICIPHER aspects of this fic! (Or, at the very least, get the ball rolling.)


	6. Dipper

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to apologize for not updating for so long. I'm in the process of moving 600 miles away from where I currently live without any of my family, and all of my time has gone into dealing with that mess.
> 
> This one is a lil bit shorter... but tbh it's kind of a bridge chapter. I'm going to keep writing tonight and tomorrow and hopefully will crank out a full blown chapter within the next couple of days.
> 
> Lots of stuff coming up in this story. I hope you're excited. Let me know what you think!

Out of the corner of his eye, Dipper could see his twin shifting around in her seat. _Hm. Guess she’s finally waking up._ The man returned his focus to the road, but glanced over when he heard a light snore. He smiled to himself. _Or maybe not._

He didn’t mind his car companions getting some rest while he drove. The minutes ticked along in calm succession, and he was content to hum along to the radio, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. He’d wake them up once they got closer to Gravity Falls, but the “alone” time was honestly kind of nice.

Knowing that they were not only visiting the sleepy Oregon town but _moving there_ left him with some mixed feelings, but he knew that it was the best option. He and Mabel had spent their summers in the odd, little town throughout their childhood, despite going through the apocalypse there. Even as they grew older and went off to college, they continued to visit their friends and family in the ‘Falls during breaks (and whenever else they could find the time). It started out as a desire to go back and help repair the town, but eventually grew into an expectation for both of them. The Mystery Shack and the town itself felt more like home than any other place they had lived.

The summer they spent in Gravity Falls when they were twelve was one of the best experiences the twins have ever had- even to this day. Nearly everyone they had met there changed their lives for the better. Dipper’s passion for the supernatural also sparked that summer, and the research he conducted there influenced how he spent his free time throughout adolescence. He even based his topics of study in college on those interests, choosing to major in Folklore and Mythology. Honestly, the reasons why Dipper and Mabel loved the little town were endless, and it made sense that they both felt so comfortable there.

Unfortunately, that time in the ‘Falls was also _the most_ difficult and traumatic period of their lives. Dipper’s scars still itched when he thought about the end of that summer, even now… almost ten years later.

He tried to ignore the phantom feelings and focus on the road.

 

\--------

 

After Bill Cipher mysteriously abandoned his reign over the town, the people who had survived were left to pick up the pieces. Everyone had to work together to rebuild the _entire_ town from the rubble and ash of a literal apocalypse. Out of all of the challenges they faced, the worst had to be the creatures that were left behind to plague the townsfolk. Although Dipper didn’t get to help with any part of that particular issue, he knew (from his sister and Wendy) just how difficult it was to clear the town of the hovering monsters and demons. No one knew why Cipher had abandoned his “friends” when he left the universe, but no one pitied them for it. If any of them had managed to survive the purging, they likely fled to the outskirts of the town to hide with the other supernatural creatures that lived in the ‘Falls.

Rebuilding Gravity Falls was arduous, but the progress they had made was astonishing. Nowadays, a tourist couldn’t tell that anything had ever happened to the town. No one really could anymore, unless they knew where to look. No one who lived there during Weirdmaggedon ever truly forgot, though.

For Dipper, the new buildings were nothing more than a bandaid over the deep gashes in Gravity Falls. The graveyards were constant, shining beacons that reminded him of all the people who died in those days. The young children and tourists who would never know of the horrors brought on by that demon should have given him some sort of relief… but their innocence only made his long-healed wounds burn again. Everywhere he looked he saw ghosts of flickering blue flame, highlighting the anguish in the eyes of those who were unlucky enough to have lived through such an event.

He was haunted by red, blue, and _gold._

 

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Dipper didn’t contribute much to the ‘Clean-Up the Apocalypse!’ efforts for the first three or four years that he and his sister had gone back to Gravity Falls. Not that he didn’t want to… but he wouldn’t have been able to help much even if he tried.

After the destruction of the ‘Falls, Dipper spent the next three years of his life in a wheelchair. He hated every second of it. The pitying glances, the lingering stares, and even the awkward people who fumbled over their words around him and avoided looking below his chin- they all made him feel like a freak. The worst type of people were the overly-shocked ones who were all too eager to ask “what happened?!”

Like he could tell people he had his leg sawed off with a laser by an insane dream demon.

Actually… sometimes he _would_ tell them the truth, just to see their reactions. They were always the same: they would laugh at his “wonderful sense of humor, despite his situation.” Although, he eventually stopped. Their naivety and innocence made him feel ill.

If there was a bright side to being crippled for the rest of his life, it was the fact that people didn’t pick on him anymore. Nobody wanted to be the asshole that made fun of a handicapped kid. Of course, even that was bittersweet for him, because some days he would think too hard about it and remember that they only treated him that way out of pity and fear of judgment… not because they didn’t think he deserved to be picked on. Even his friends were nervous about joking with him and accidentally upsetting him. Sometimes he just wanted to scream and tell everyone that he wasn’t fragile.

But honestly? Maybe he _was_ fragile.

There were no real upsides to losing a limb, if he was being honest with himself, but life got better for him at age sixteen. His parents got him a custom prosthetic for his birthday that year, and _fuck,_ that made him feel better than any medication ever had. Sure, some kids got cars and huge parties, but that was nothing compared to being able to walk on your own again after three years of immobility.

 

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Out of all of the things they lost that summer, Dipper would have thought losing a limb would be the thing that haunted him the most. However, for both him and Mabel, the most devastating part of that summer was their Grunkle Stan’s funeral.

Due to the situation Stan had put himself in by taking his brother’s name, the majority of the town didn’t know about his death. The Pines decided that the only way to explain Ford’s presence would be to have him reclaim his name and for them all to act as though Stanley Pines never existed. There was a lot of tension after the apocalypse, and they collectively agreed that it would be best to try and keep their family’s responsibility for Bill’s presence out of the public eye. It was done out of necessity, but it still hurt that those who knew and cared about the man would never be able to mourn his death. Even those who knew of his death couldn’t publicly grieve.

They buried their great uncle in the woods outside of the Mystery Shack, rather than in a graveyard. Wendy, Soos, Pacifica, Mabel, Dipper, and Ford were the only ones who attended the burial.

It didn’t bring Dipper any sort of closure.

 

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Since Ford took over Stan’s place after the funeral, those who knew the situation agreed to explain Ford’s genetic mutation as a result of one of the weird bubbles Bill had conjured up. That would be enough to quell the curiosity that came from the citizens of Gravity Falls about his six-fingered hands. Although, none of them had ever needed to explain Ford’s appearance, since he never left his lab under the Mystery Shack.

Dipper actually found himself having to explain where his Grunkle Stan was nearly every time he went into town. Those who knew Stan were worried about his new, reclusive state, and asked frequently about how he was doing. When the twins were younger, the Mystery Shack had become permanently closed for business, and they had always fumbled with explaining the reasons why. Eventually, people just assumed that Stan had gone insane with shock and grief. Honestly, that wasn’t far from the truth.

Ford had, for all intents and purposes, gone completely insane. Something inside of him just snapped after he lost his twin, and Dipper didn’t blame him. The man kept himself holed up in his lab, conducting vague, bizarre research. The twins tended to leave him alone to it, usually only checking in to make sure he was doing alright. They usually had to force him to eat and bathe, and they weren’t sure how he survived when they weren’t staying with him.

Their Grunkle Ford’s state was the main driving factor behind Mabel and Dipper returning to Gravity Falls as often as they could, and it was the one thing that truly confirmed their decision to permanently move to the town.

 

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Dipper sighed. He twisted his neck to crack it and glanced at the clock on his dashboard.

_Well, at least we’ve made pretty good time._

He was frustrated with himself for getting wrapped up in his own thoughts. There were always flashbacks and nightmares that came with the first couple of days back in Gravity Falls, but he knew he was dwelling on them pretty badly this year. It was hard not to when he knew he would have to give a tour of the town soon.

Glancing in the rearview mirror, Dipper could see his fiancé, still passed out in the back seat. He was sprawled out on some bags of clothing, mouth slightly agape as he slept, with messy, dark hair covering most of his face. The sight made Dipper feel more at ease, kept his wandering thoughts more grounded. The man, even while asleep, managed to make him relax, pulling him back into the present.

It was strange to bring Andy with him to Gravity Falls. It wasn’t just the seriousness of moving in with the person you’re in a relationship with, either. What made Dipper feel alien was having such an important part of his life outside of the ‘Falls _here_. Something about it made his stomach turn. Both he and Mabel had done a decent job of keeping their lives normal outside of the weirdness of the Oregon town, and yet here he was just throwing his last threads of normalcy right into the fires of Gravity Falls.

Andy knew about the town and the things that happened to the Pines there, of course. He knew enough to be worried about moving there, at least. Dipper was anxious about how he would handle the move, but figured that if he liked Dipper, Gravity Falls was a pretty similar type of weird.

Dipper had been too caught up in his thoughts to remember to wake his passengers when they entered the town. Pulling up to park next to Stan’s old car outside of the Shack, he sighed to himself, knowing he’d have a challenge getting their help with unpacking the car.

He leaned over and poked his twin’s face. “Mabes, wake up, we’re here.” Of course, she groaned at him and squeezed her eyes shut more tightly. Dipper rolled his eyes and got out of the car, shutting his door roughly to help awaken them. He walked to the back of the car and opened it to see a groggy Andy rubbing his face, which was covered in red lines from sleeping on the bags.

“Hey, good morning sunshine. This is it,” Dipper smiled at the man, gesturing nervously at the Shack before grabbing a couple of the bags to carry inside.

When he came back outside to grab more stuff from the car, Dipper saw Andy standing outside of Mabel’s car door, leaned over the girl who was curled up and still hopelessly clinging to sleep. “C’mon, Mabel, you’ve gotta at least get out of the car.” She wrapped her arms around her face in response. “I’m gonna dump your glitter out into the dirt!” Andy warned, taking a step back and smirking at the girl, who shot up like she’d been electrocuted.

“You wouldn’t!”

“Would too. Get up, you sack of beans.”

Dipper just grinned and shook his head at them before taking some more stuff inside, preferring unpacking to dealing with their exhaustion-induced bickering. After he’d brought in most of their things, he went down to the lab to tell their Grunkle Ford that they’d arrived, only to find the man asleep at his desk. He searched around for the blanket he kept downstairs for when he found Ford like this, and when he found it he draped it around the man’s shoulders and went back up to finish unpacking.

Walking into the living room, Dipper found Mabel stretched out on the couch underneath a partially-opened box of pillows and stuffed animals. “Mabel, did you help Andy get _anything_ out of the car?”

She squinted at him. “Yeah. I brought this box in. I helped. Lemme sleep.”

He walked over and picked the box up, turning it over and dumping everything on top of her. She squeaked in protest, which made him laugh. “You’re not even going to go to your room?” She shook her head violently and clutched some plushies to her chest. “Fine, but you’re helping unpack boxes tomorrow morning. _Early_.” Mabel didn’t answer, and he just left her there covered in fluff.

As he was walking back out the front door, he nearly ran into Andy, who was carrying a couple of boxes. “I got the rest of it, Dip. Everything is out of the car.”

“Thanks, sorry I couldn’t get Mabel to help more.” Dipper took one of the boxes out of his arms and tilted his head towards the stairs. “Our room is up there, if you want to help me just bring these right up there.”

“Sure.” Andy followed Dipper up to the room that he and Mabel had stayed in together when they were younger. They had replaced the twin beds with a full one a few years back, and Mabel had moved into Stan’s old room.

Dipper set the box he held down on his desk and turned to take the other one. “Well, what do you think?” He smiled at Andy, draping his arms over his shoulders.

He smiled back up at Dipper. “It’s… odd. But, I guess that’s what I expected? The room’s nice.” Glancing away from Dipper, he shrugged. “I don’t know what you want me to say. It’s overwhelming, but I’ll adjust to it soon. Plus, I am basically half-asleep, so.”

“I understand. I’m glad you don’t hate it, at least,” Dipper chuckled and moved away from him. “You can get some sleep, if you want. We don’t have to unpack everything yet, and my Grunkle Ford is asleep so it’s not like you can really meet him or anything right now…” Dipper rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly.

Andy responded by just sitting on the bed and nodding. Dipper cleared his throat quietly. “I’ll go get you some pillows and blankets.”

 

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A couple of hours after Andy went to bed and Dipper had half-carried his twin to her room, the man found himself unable to sleep, and had decided to stay downstairs to avoid bothering his fiancé while he slept. He had been leafing through a mythology textbook from a class he’d particularly enjoyed during school, but when he realized that he wasn’t really absorbing any of the words, he put it down and sprawled out on the couch, staring at the ceiling.

It was obvious that he wouldn’t be able to focus on anything, and sleep seemed out of the question. Dipper grimaced and sat up before leaning down to unhook his prosthetic. He turned the object around in his hands a few times before placing it on the floor beside the couch.

_Everything just needs some time to adjust._ He sighed to himself. _I hope._

 

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was BETA'd by a different person... my usual is busy having fun in NYC ;) so pls forgive any slipups... I try my best.


	7. AUTHORS NOTE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Please don't be too disappointed, but this is just a message to you guys that I've kept waiting.

I am really sorry that I haven't updated in so long, I promise that I still care about this fic and have every intention to finish it. I recently moved out of my parents house and my new place is almost 700 miles away from everyone I know. I've been working so much and dealing with being a real adult for the first time in my life. I promise when I'm less stressed and busy I will start regularly updating again, but for now I'll say expect an extra long update or a double update within the next week or two as an apology.


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